NOTE: Issues with my website and had to make some edits which took some time as I have been uploading my pictures incorrectly I found out and filled my drive space! Updates will be regular now 🙂
Up early this morning to take a taxi to the Dublin Airport with Anne and Richard, as they are departing back to Victoria today via Calgary and we are going to pick up our rental car at Europcar – first time renting from this agency! The taxi driver was really nice and ask we were running early (he was early picking us up too) he dropped Andrew and I off at the rental car agency prior to taking Anne and Richard to the airport. As I mentioned, we had never rented from Europcar previously however there was a SIGNIFICANT difference in price between it and Avis, Budget and Hertz etc (half the cost) so we decided to try it out. We had a great experience with Sixt in New Zealand, which was an up and coming rental car agency at that time so why not? Oh my goodness – it took us over an hour to rent the car! Apparently Ireland is one of 4 countries in the world that if you are using the car insurance benefit on your credit card they require in writing that you are covered to drive in Ireland. I had the rental part of the insurance document with me but it did not mention Andrew by name and the last 4 numbers of the credit card that he was using. So we phoned TD Aeroplan Visa and they sent me the letter, despite it being the middle of the night for them. Then the agent said that it did not mention Ireland, so I had to phone TD Aeroplan Visa back (Andrew is using a secondary card from my Visa so I had to call as the primary card holder) and they said they could not modify the letter they sent me so would an email be sufficient? I hoped so, and that is what I gave the agent at Europcar and while he did not like having 2 documents, it was the best we could do. Then, finally we got the car and we were out of there!
We hopped onto M50 which is a contactless toll highway out of the Dublin area. Normally I do not like paying tolls as you have learned, or if we do have to pay them, I like paying them myself and the rental company does not charge me later some hiked up fee. However apparently the only surcharge is .50 Euros so I was fine with that just to get out of the city! We had a lovely drive to Athlone, which would be our stop for the next 3 days – most of it was highway driving until we got to the town and then we quickly found the Sheraton – it is the only highrise in town – yet we were too early to check-in! So we went for lunch at a really cute cafe that advertised gluten free items and then the hotel messaged me that our room was ready and we returned to the hotel. That night we ate dinner in the lobby restaurant – I had a very lovely chicken and curry rice dish that was marked gluten free and then it was early to bed in our room in the sky!
Tomorrow is a chore day – laundry! We are going to drive around the lake that Athlone is at the bottom of and do laundry at a laundromat somewhere along the way…