Words to the wise

A few lessons learned on this trip to Ireland while they’re fresh in my mind, as I sit here enjoying the free wireless in the Shannon Airport departures area …

• Do not on any account forget your travel clock or a watch. No room I stayed in had an actual clock – only at the Westport Plaza was there a display of the time, and that was part of the flat screen TV.
• Consider GPS if you are going to do a lot of driving, or at least spend some time mapping out the routes and be sure to note town names along the way; several times I came upon an unexpected junction and just had to work out by process of elimination what to do.
  Which brings me to …
• Signage. Sometimes, there’s so much and yet it tells you nothing. Other times (more frequently) there’s none. At all. Until the instant you are supposed to turn/merge/yield/etc and then it’s the size of a postage stamp. I did quite a bit of looping around.
• This probably goes without saying, but the importance of rain gear (at least during the time of year I have been here) cannot be overestimated.

I sat here and calculated how long I will be in transit today, what with one thing and another … That was probably a bad move on my part. I put it somewhere near 15 hours, maybe more depending on how long it takes me to get home once I get in.

Time to go. Later taters.