We sat in the dining room admiring trophies and photos of the proprietor's grandchildren and eating a small portioned but delicious Irish Traditional Breakfast. (This one with mushrooms instead of baked beans, but the same Serious Slab of Bacon.) Young couples sat at the other two tables. After breakfast, the lady informed us that she did not have a credit card. After she said this a few times, I understood she meant she had no "credit card machine." Luckily, I had just enough cash to make the 70 Euro total. Since the last three ATMs I saw in Dublin were out of order, one of our first stops will have to be a cash machine.

We signed the guestbook, checked out, and were sitting in the car outside when I remembered that we forgot to pay the toll. (There is a toll road outside of Dublin that the car rental place warned us about that even the road sign itself instructs drivers to pay online. Weird, but I remembered within 24 hours while we still had (weak) wifi, whew.)

Speaking of which, the wifi in Ireland has been existent, but underwhelming thus far.

We drove north along the coast of the "Burrens", a beautiful area of limestone rock formations that takes up a good portion of County Clare. Again, narrow twisty roads with locals lining up behind us were the norm.

But what a view!

Google Maps thought we should take an "L" road heading in the direction of Galway, but we disagreed and stuck with the "N" road. We were clearly on the route that most people take to get to Cliffs of Moher judging by the number of tourist buses going the other direction, making us scrape along the curbs and bushes on the left as we tried not to hit them. (The drivers of said buses, however, seemed to be confident they had plenty of room.)

Avoiding Galway was on our agenda, not because it isn't an awesome destination (we're told it is), but because we wanted to avoid driving unnecessarily in the big city.

We realized moments after exiting the first roundabout that we picked the wrong spoke and were headed straight toward Galway's center. Luckily, another roundabout saved us.

Multi-lane roundabouts make me nervous. I'm never sure which lane I should be in. While it seems logical to use the inner lane if we go halfway around or more, at some point we need to get into the outer lane to exit, so what about cars already in that lane?

We stopped for gas for the first time this trip.

We were extra careful to make sure we used the green pump (the opposite as America) and filled up, putting in about 25 litres. The pumps were labeled clearly, I assume since tourists have erred before. Using the wrong fuel will put a quick stop to your driving.

If you look at the listed prices, 25 x 10 cents comes out to a €2.50 difference between diesel and unleaded for this tank. Our decision regarding our car rental stands. Luckily, the gas station took our U.S. card (as most places do) since we have had no luck locating an ATM.

We made our way north. Following the signs toward Sligo turned out to be a wise choice as nearly every sign pointed the way. The road widened enough that we almost drove the speed limit at times! But locals still lined up behind us. And we still pulled over to let them pass. (Our going record was six cars.)

City limits were defined by two giant speed limit signs (usually 60kph) on either side of the road, indicating that we should slow down. The irony was that we were rarely going above that to start with.

As we drove through small cities, we found ourselves giving drive-by economic appraisals. Some towns felt old, some were clearly modern, and a number seemed to be going through hardship. The more rural areas looked how I pictured Ireland before I came - rolling green hills with rock walls defining farm boundaries. We saw some trees, but not a ton. This area is mostly grassland dotted with bushes and hills in the distance. Only one construction zone slowed us. No cows or sheep (or chickens) needed to cross the road.

We were just getting hungry when the highway cut through the center of a cute town. We found a parking spot right there, along the road! Figured that was a sign.

We walked up and down the street, stretching our legs, perusing any menus we happened to see. We stopped by an old church that had a graveyard in front with increasingly modern tombstones naming historical reverends back to 1922, then wandered back to the center of the town since that seemed to be the happening place.

At the cafe, we were presented with this menu:

I ordered the Tex-Mex Wrap and sis ordered the Chicken Caesar Salad (not on this page). Mine was good but hers was essentially a giant bowl of chicken and croutons with some strips of lettuce at the bottom. She perused the Mayo Advertiser (noting that one shouldn't advertise that you are an advertiser) while I confused the staff by trying to pay in pounds.

I took the wheel and we followed pre-Googled directions to Carrowmore, though the brown road signs in this case were so helpful, we managed to get there without turning around once!

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