We had a wonderful trip!  It was our first, although we are already planning a return!  Thanks so much to Michele!  Your book, website and forum were instrumental in how easy and fun this trip turned out to be.

Couple of things I learned.

Once we got used to the Irish way of road signage,  a gps was not necessary.  When they say "what ever road you are on will get you there" they mean it!  The military road over the wicklow mountains was a real eye opener!  But we realized that eventually we would hit the ocean and have to turn around ;)

Patience is definately a virtue (and so is a quick reading eye) when trying to figure out the fingersigns!  Amazing!

Don't visit the cliffs of moher in the morning (if you want pix) they face West for the most part and will be in the shade.

Sprint phones do not work AT ALL unless they are wifi'd in.. then they work just fine (except for calling and texting - that you can only do on USA soil) that means no GPS.

If you want to collect the tax back (and forget the 17% they charge, I averaged about 8%) do your tax forms daily... be sure to register your horizon card before you leave!

It takes a Loooooooog time to go through 2 sets of security and 2 sets of customs.. we left Dublin 3 hours before our flight and almost didn't make it! Although DO mention you are short for time if you are!  We got to the front of a couple of lines doing that when time got really tight.

We found it nearly impossible to prevent vendors from charging us in Euros.. even when they swore it would charge in euros we would still see the "dreaded" your card was charged "$xxxx".  The first night we asked a pub in Dublin to reverse it and do it in Euros, they ended up recharging us!  Then they called their CC service and were told "you can't reverse charges" so they gave us the cash and a few extra Euros to compensate ... hum...  Mostly we just used cash.  ATM were nearly everywhere (except Doolin!) Gas stations and the B&B's we stayed at, didn't seem to have an issue though.

Westport's Glenderan B&B charged a surcharge for CC use btw.  The note was well placed, so we were prepared to save a little and pay cash.

Just because a B&B says they have wifi, that doesn't mean you can use it in your room, the worst was the one where it was only available in the dining room but then the dining room was locked at 9pm!  oops!

Even when it rains every single dang day, Ireland is still a great place to visit :)  We noticed that when it did rain, it wouldn't last long (5-10 minutes) so we learned to pop under an overhang and wait it out.

oh.. and never, never, ever be an idiot and "think" you are supposed to put a 750ml bottle of expensive Irish whiskey (bought as a gift) in your carry on...  eep!  AA was happy to charge me $60 to check in my carryon :(  but that was better than giving it to the security checkpoint fella (he was so nice to offer though! :)

Again, Thanks to all that helped us out up here! 

Cathy