Random Ireland Observations

• The people are super-duper nice.  Seriously.
• There are not many fat Irish people.  I think part of this is because they don't drink soda like we do.  When I did order a Coke, it always came in a small size (with no ice) and there were no free refills.  I think the other part is because a lot of them walk or ride bicycles everywhere.
• The Irish don't use ice!  Our hotel room was lacking an ice bucket.  When we got water with our meals, there were no cups full of ice.  However, the beer was chilled!
• Using an ATM was an extremely easy and effective way to manage money while we were there.  Credit cards worked fine too.  Also, Post Offices would exchange currency.
• The paid parking system confused the tar out of us.  Parking garages had you pay the fee at a kiosk before you got back in your car to leave.  Pay-and-display parking was scratch-off ticket looking things for sale at the Post Office and maybe elsewhere in Limerick.  In Ennis there was a machine on the sidewalk that printed out a ticket for you to put in your car.  It was all just very strange because we didn't know how it all worked the first few days. 
• Bono sings about "where the streets have no name", and many of the streets in fact had no name.  Thankful for the GPS, even though I cursed at it 80% of the time.
• The roads are crazy narrow and curvy, with stone walls overgrown with shrubs that will scrape the side of your car constantly if you stay on your "side".
• The people are really nice!
• The countryside was so breathtakingly beautiful...yet stinky.  Sheep don't smell great.