When Nancy and I arrived in Galway, after a 12 hour trip from London via taxi-airplane-bus-train, we were tired. That is the only explanation I have for me being somewhat cranky. I like to think this is a rare occasion, however, I know that Nancy is probably going to read this so I am going to leave a ‘no comment’ on that opinion.
We emerged on Eyre Square, not fresh-faced but hopeful and full of enthusiasm . . and maybe a little concerned about the British penchant for driving on the wrong side of the road. But, really, how hard could that possibly be? It’s just backwards in your brain.
When I was young I played baseball right handed and was reasonable at the game I think. I have to admit that I hold the record for the number of strike outs in a season for the Waianae Yankees. I discovered during my years soujourning across the decades (hate to say it), that I can hit left handed as well . . maybe a little better. This probably explains why I am enshined in the Waianae Little League Record Books with a strike-out record that will probably never be broken. It was the only record that I have ever held in baseball, except for the year that I batted .489 for the Pearl City Tigers.
With that as a backdrop, we arrived in Galway.
We walked around Eyre Square and couldn’t find the office of Payless Rent-A-Car. After an extended discussion with Nancy on the probable location, we decided to go to the Budget Rent-A-Car office and ask. And, there in the lower corner of the window were seven three-inch high letters . . Payless.
We subsequently rented a car. Here are the highlights:
- The agent said that Payless was really Budget Rent-A-Car.
- The Payless phone number on the Expedia website doesn’t work. It had been disconnected. The Payless/Budget agent said that Expedia just made up numbers to fill in the box. That doesn’t sound reasonable, but that’s what he said.
- They wouldn’t take the insurance we purchased from Expedia. We had to buy it from them and try and get our money from Expedia when we returned to the states.
- The car had 179,875 kilometers on it (111,769 miles according to Google).
- The car had a flat tire the day after we got it. The tire was frozen on the wheel, so a special team had to come out and change it. I had to take it in to Modern Tyre to get it repaired, pay for the tire myself, and bring the voucher back to Budget for reimbursement. Fortunately Budget approved the reimbursement in advance because we had full coverage. The money wasn’t necessarily the issue, the loss of one day of vacation was. And, as it turned out, they didn’t reimburse us.
- When we went back to Budget they said that we had to drive that relatively unreliable vehicle to Shannon (appx. 60 miles) through the back roads of Ireland if we wanted another vehicle. And, by the way, he noted that if I knew how to drive in Ireland I probably wouldn’t have gotten the flat tire.
We wanted to drive to La Hinch Golf Course to play a links course. However, clearly the car wasn’t reliable enough, so we had to change our plans. We are going to return the car today, three days early. They said they didn’t know if they could reimburse us for the money that we prepaid for the car.
However, we couldn’t afford to take a chance that we would be on some rural road in Ireland with questionable cell-phone reception trying to flag down someone to help us.
I will say that everyone else that we have encountered has been wonderful here. People at the Glenlo Golf Course helped us with the tires, the AA man the Modern Tyre owner helped us get over the tire replacement issue, Mary’s apartment has been wonderful and Galway is charming!