Used Cars

Shopping for used cars, particularly at our price level, sucks.

Firstly, it is difficult to get around, so every contact we make we'd like to be serious about. Its not like I can hop in my own car, run over, take a look and decide whether or not to be serious about it. Secondly, even though the Irish speak English, the accents vary and it is difficult to understand, particularly over a cell phone.

When we decided to start checking into used cars both Sheila and Maggie sort of teased me saying "See! We TOLD you it would be easy and a nice thing to have!" But it turns out not to be easy. The last issue is insurance. Only one place will even offer insurance to non-residents without an international driver's license.
Also, in all honesty, its just not how I want to spend my time. Sure, I'd love the convenience of a car, but I feel like Sheila and I wasted our yesterday with it all and that was just not the purpose of our time here together. Sheila is a great shopper and does due diligence. But that takes time.

I want a car but I don't want to do the work to get one.

The last thing is that I am truly naive. Thank God for Sheila and for the guys at the little repair shop down the street. They all are cynical up-front of the people selling the cars. I'm not. I really believe them. One guy yesterday would have sold two women with two kids a car that would have lasted us about three weeks. Alas.

Anyway... We found a way to avoid all the hassle and still grab a little convenience for not that much more in cost: short term rental/lease. Sheila is going to check out one more used car lead and then we will probably opt for renting for a couple of months.

On the bright side, it is almost March. Maggie is getting giddy about her birthday and so are the rest of us! Her birthday always falls during that much-needed time in the winter where we need an excuse to celebrate and eat cake!

Sheila has laid out our plans for the rest of our stay - it all takes off from here with visitors, travel during spring break, and more visitors. It will begin to feel like sand in an hour-glass!

My spring break is in a week and a half and lasts for two entire weeks. This is followed by the kids' spring break which also lasts for two entire weeks. The first week of my break Maggie's friend Julia and her family are coming and we will be partaking in all of the St. Patrick's Day festivities the city can offer. We then head immediately south to visit my cousin Jeanne in Greece. She lives on the west coast and we only have about 9 days to travel (I didn't feel like I could take an entire THIRD week off after already having taken two weeks off, so we needed to be back by a Wednesday). We considered flying to Athens and then trying to take a ship around the coast to see her, but this doesn't really happen in March, so we opted to go to Rome first, then a short train to the Ionian Sea then an overnight ship to Greece. It will not be enough time but it will be lovely. In retrospect maybe I should have called off class. In any case, we are headed there and looking forward to a little more warmth and sun!