1. Driving

While I knew that driving would be on the other side of the road, I wasn't expecting the whole car to be flipped as well. The driver's seat was on the right-hand side, and the passenger's seat was on the left. They obviously drive on the other side of the road, and they don't use intersections, they use roundabouts! Their roundabouts are completely backwards compared to those in the United States. It was definitely weird at first being the passenger and watching it all, but for the driver, it takes a bit of time to get used to.

They also share the road with cyclists. People on bicycles will drive right up beside you and get right in front of you at a red light and continue to ride in the driving lane. This is something that took me awhile to get used to, especially coming from the city where we don't share the entire road with cyclists.

Throughout the city and towns, they would have signs that would say "Drive at what you deem is safe." Throughout the countryside, they don't really have a speed limit. Everyone drives at their own pace and the shoulder of the road is a lot wider in Ireland so if they are too slow they will pull over on the shoulder and let the car behind them pass.

Overall, the driving situation was something totally different from the United States, but it seemed to work a lot easier than the intersections that we have in the states and the rush hour traffic only seemed to be the "worst" as far as backed-up traffic. Other than that, the roundabouts made everything super smooth.

2. Eating Out

When you go to a restaurant in the United States, they often have a waiter or waitress taking care of you. For the most part, we noticed that a majority of the places that we ate at, there weren't necessarily any members of waitstaff taking care of us. We would order our meals from the front counter and someone from the BOH (back-of-house) would bring out our food. A lot of times, we would also need to pay at the same counter we ordered at. We rarely received a bill in the same form that we do in the states. It was something to definitely get used to, but nothing too extra.

The drinking age in Ireland is a lot younger than 21 (like the United States). I don't think we were ever asked for our ID's. Every pub or restaurant that we went to, we always ordered a drink with dinner, and not once were we ever asked for an ID. One of the other attractions that we went to was the Jameson Factory (Whiskey), where we were able to taste some of the product; we ordered our tickets online to beat the rush and not once did it mention an ID of any sorts. We are both over 21, but it was still a cool experience to not get questioned about our age for once.

3. Lodging

One major thing that we had to find out the hard way, AIR CONDITIONING IS NOT COMMON IN IRELAND HOTEL ROOMS. They will often times only have a heater, but since it's rarely hot enough for an air conditioner, they do not offer any. We just so happened to visit on the hottest week in Ireland history, so you can imagine my surprise when I couldn't find any AC in the hotel room. We managed, but the comforters were not used at all. Another thing we noticed was the showers. The showers had two handles, similar to the sinks. But one handle turned on the water, and the other handle controlled the temperature of the water.

The toilets in the bathrooms, as well, did not have handles to flush. Instead, they had a push button that seemed to need all of your upper body strength to push in, in order to flush the toilet. Sometimes, whether or not our toilet was actually broken, it would not flush properly. It would just bring more water into the toilet... Which was extremely weird, but it didn't waste as much water, I suppose?

4. Gas Stations

Their gas stations were very different from those in the United States. They always pumped before they paid. The gas stations were a lot more common. Around every corner, you would find a gas station and a church. The food choices in the gas station itself were a LOT more healthy than in the states. They would often times have fruits available for snacks instead of junk food, and they were always having recycling bins available at gas stations; they take their recycling very seriously over there.

Another thing that we noticed was the colors of the gas pump handles were reversed. In the United States, most of our "normal gas pumps" are black, with the diesel pump being green. In Ireland, the petrol (which is "normal gas") is a green handle, while the diesel pumps are black. Not sure why the reversal, but was very interesting to notice.

5. Shopping

One of the last major things we noticed is that in Ireland, the tax is already included in the cost. So for instance, let's say you're looking to buy a bottle of water, and the price tag says "1.50." That is exactly what you're going to pay at the register; nothing more, nothing less. This made it so much easier for us to go shopping when we needed to because we knew how much money we had, and we didn't need to worry about extra taxes.

Since the country is so green, they try their hardest to not give the customers bags. We had gone into a shop and bought a couple of drinks (more than we could carry between the two of us). The cashier asked us if we wanted a bag, and not knowing, she pulled up a plastic bag and scanned it. In most shops in Ireland, you have to pay extra if you want a bag to carry your groceries in. This must make full-on grocery shopping very difficult. I didn't pay close attention to how much extra it was, it just threw me off when she scanned it.

6. Accents/Common Phrases

Finally, the most obvious last culture shock we noticed was the accents of the commoners in Ireland. They spoke exactly how you would expect Irish people to speak, and we loved it. Couldn't get enough, to the point where Josh was faking an accent when we talked to people.

Some common phrases that we noticed in everyday conversation; for example, I was waiting in line to buy a couple drinks at a gas station, the lady behind the counter saw me and opened up another aisle for me to check out at. To get my attention she said, "You alright?" My first reaction in my head was "Yeah? I'm fine." But then I realized she was just asking me, "Are you all set?"

When you ask someone a question, and the answer is yes, do not expect them to say yes. They will 99.9% of the time, never say yes. The correct response when someone asks you a question and the answer is yes is "Aye."

"Do you know where to go next?" "Aye."

This was another thing that Josh had picked up on, and now that we're home, he's still saying it.

Of course, there are many different phrases they use, but one of the other common phrases we heard a lot was "Crackin.'"

"You came into town at the perfect time, the weather this week is supposed to be crackin.'"

Apparently, it's another word for sweet, awesome, or great.