Everything went smoothly with our flight and there's no snow here!
Made it through immigration, grabbed our checked bags and went to the rental car counter.
That's where my apprehension began.
The young lady was nice enough, but very serious as she explained that they drive on the opposite side of the road in Ireland (I knew that), and my car would be a stick shift (I didn't know that). Of course, since the steering wheel is on the right that meant I would have to shift with my left hand (I knew that) but then she proceeded to explain that they would put a $5000 hold on my credit card until I returned in case of damage to the vehicle or property (ok, I didn't know that either).
She walked me through the need to put diesel in the car, not gas (that mistake could cost me bigtime), told me about how narrow the roads were in the countryside, always give right of way to large trucks, the weather here can turn very bad quickly, etc., etc., etc. By the time she finished I wasn't sure I wanted to drive anymore.
But, I refused to pay $30 a day more for an automatic and we soon took off. Which is when I realized your first experience with driving on the left side of the road probably shouldn't be in a big city like Dublin, Ireland. Oh well, we made it to our hotel in Tallaght and after dinner prepared to head out the next day to see beautiful 'Arland.