So we headed over to the car rental place to pick up our car. Driving on the left side of the street, yikes! But when we were getting everything set up, the guy told us that we had booked through an American site which didn’t include the insurance you have to buy for rentals in Ireland. He explained our two insurance options, $27 a day or $35 a day. Um, okay. I had known about the insurance but thought that was included in my price when I booked online, since the base rate was $90 but the total was $130. That additionally $40 must be taxes and insurance, I figured. But now I was paying $27 a day on top of my $130 and that just for insurance! So I asked the guy what our total would be and he said $360! WHAT!?!?!
We had to sit down for a minute and figure everything out. $360 for a week car rental was just outrageous and we hadn’t planned on anything close to that. And we had to consider the cost of gas too, which is much more expensive here than in the US. We were just stunned and had had nothing else lined up since we didn’t anticipating paying all our limbs for this rental. I told the guy that it seemed a little ridiculous, especially since this is Thrifty and they are supposed to be cheap. He got it down to $300 but that was still double what we thought we would pay. So we just left.
What to do now? I already had hostels booked for everywhere else we were going in Ireland and I wasn’t about to spend a week in Dublin. There’s just enough to see and do here for that. So we went to a tourist office – they have them everywhere here in Europe – and asked about our options. These cute little Irish ladies told us the cheapest way to see Ireland was definitely by bus. So we went to the bus station nearby and found a bus leaving for Killarney, our final destination for the day, in about five minutes. It cost $60 for the both of us. Better than the car rental price and, as has become another phrase of ours, “cheaper than the taxi.”
So that was the bulk of our day was getting to Killarney, which is on the other side of Ireland. We had to scratch our Wicklow Mountains tour – sad face – but at least we found a way to get to Killarney where we will be until Monday. The whole bus trip, including an hour stopover in Limerick, was seven hours. So I finally got some studying done, in addition to plenty of napping. We also got to see lots of the countryside, which was beautiful. Lots of green, lots of cows, and lots of sheep.
We checked into our cute little hostel and went out for some grub. We got a pizza and spent the rest of the evening walking around. I wanted to hear some more Irish music, which you can catch at a lot of the pubs, but we stopped at one only to find them having problems with the sound. After about a twenty minute wait, we called it good and went back to our place. We exchanged stories with our fellow hostellers, two guys from California, and looked forward to tomorrow with an exploration of the gorgeous and spacious park nearby.
PHOTOS:
The reality of it all. I was on a bus for six hours today, quite unexpectedly, and I was none too happy about our sudden change of plans due to Ireland's outrageous car rental rates. I am studying though, at least, and I did take time to look out the window along the way!
Honestly, Ireland is unbelievably green and so gorgeous. These hills are just to die for. It made the bus trip much less painful to look out the window at that!
And that... This is just a sneak preview! More breathtaking Irish scenery to come!
1 comment:
can't wait to see more scenery of ireland. i am surprised you had to pay for insurance. you don't have to in the states. it's an option you can add. that sucks. but driving on the other side of the street...hope to hear a story about that.
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