Tag Archives: Rental Car

Jan22

A trip into legend – The Cave of the Cats in Rathcrogan, and the origin of Samhain (Halloween)

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Thursday, 24-October-2024

It’s pronounced “Sell-Win”, by the way. Not “Sam-Hay-ne”.

I learned that pretty quickly, as we drove out into the Irish countryside, on our mission to find the roots of Halloween, buried beneath the earth of the Emerald Isle. I was on the road with my friends Brian and Megan, heading West toward the midlands of Ireland, enjoying the quiet and good conversation as the highway passed beneath the wheels of our rental car.

Megan had invited us out to explore the Cave of the Cats, or Oweynagat Cave in its native Irish, in the town of Rathcrogan. She’d first heard about it years back, when she was first getting interested in Ireland, as the origin of Halloween – according to myth, this cave was where the spirits of the otherworld would enter ours one evening per year. That evening, people would stay indoors, or dress up to avoid being taken captive and dragged back underground to the otherworld… an evening that evolved over time into what we call Halloween.

It was an excellent adventure – I can’t say that we passed into the otherworld, or that we did battle with any ancient spirits… but we did get an excellent tour of the land, heard stories about its history, and even had the chance to step foot into the cave itself. We didn’t go particularly deep, of course, as who knows how long it could have taken us to get out…

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On the way out, we stopped in for lunch, and a bit of exploration, in a town called Roscommon. We grabbed a bite to eat, explored Roscommon castle, and I even flew the drone around a bit!

Nothing of major note, but definitely one of the fun parts of Ireland – being able to stop into small towns, tour a castle, and then get back on the road. Good times!

Rathcrogan itself found us stopped at the visitor’s center, meeting our tour guide, and then descending into history and myth of Samhain. Our guide was absolutely amazing – as the guy who literally wrote the book on the area (we definitively got copies), he regaled us with myth and story from all across Ireland, focused on those tied in with the cave that we were exploring. We listened, absorbed, learned, and let ourselves be transported back in time… to the days of Celtic heroes and monsters.



Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rathcroghan#Oweynagat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rathcroghan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain

Aug16

A train to Switzerland – From Marseille to Zermatt

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Thursday, 18-July-2024


I dropped the rental off back at Marseille airport, hitched a taxi to the train station, and braced myself for my longest train ride of the trip.

I had about nine hours ahead of me – my longest “commute” of this adventure, with the most layovers and the highest opportunity for things to go wrong. They already had started to, in actuality, earlier in the month when flash-floods had hit Zermatt and partially washed out one of the train lines that I was scheduled to take. I was anxious, but optimistic. I’d made it this far, the trains so far had been quite good, and I was confident I’d make it through the trials and travails.


I started at the ticket booth. I’d bought reservations on as many trains as I could, of course, but many trains didn’t accept reservations… which is where my Eurail pass would come in. In theory it would cover me for everything, but I still wanted to make sure. I did, thankfully, and after waiting in line for nearly 30min to talk to an information staff member I was able to confirm that my pass covered everything and that I would be good to go.

I had breakfast, hauled my bags onto the train once it arrived, and left Marseille behind.



The rides went fairly smoothly at first. I was able to find a seat, and the train made its way toward Switzerland.

Soon enough, though, I hit a hurdle – the conductor wouldn’t accept my Eurail pass. I couldn’t say whether it was the language barrier or what, but after 5min of trying to understand why my pass wasn’t good (which the info people had confirmed it was), I was given a choice – pay an extra $98 for a ticket, or get off at the next stop with a fine for riding without a ticket.

I paid, of course, and was able to make my way to the next station.

From Marseille, to Geneva.
From Geneva, to Visp.
From Visp, a bus to Täsch.
From Täsch, a cog railway to Zermatt.


In Geneva, I dove into the pass a little bit more. I found out how to set up the App to show a QR code, which apparently was what the first conductor had wanted… but hadn’t explained to me.

I had some lunch, too, and added a note into my calendar to contest the charge on my credit card.

I hopped the next train, then the next bus, and then finally the cog railway.


I stared in awe at the cliffs, as the granite slowly rose out of the ground as our elevation rose.

I arrived in Zermatt, and simply goggled at the Matterhorn before happily making my way to my home for the next few days.

Aug6

A car accident in France

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Sunday, 07-July-2024


On the drive home from picking my Mom and Steve up from the airport, a challenging situation arose.

As the title suggests, I got in a car accident.

I’d rented a car, since Cassis is a good ways from Marseille and we were considering taking some day trips into central France. I wasn’t too worried about it – France is a bit crazy with their driving (everyone is training to be an F1 racer. EVERYONE.) but they’re fairly predictable… at least in my opinion. And, frankly, I was confident – I’d driven in France and Spain before, and come out from it none the worse for wear.


I won’t include photos here, because car accident, but understand that it was thankfully quite simple and minor. It took a while to deal with, of course, but there wasn’t any blood and both vehicles seemed to work perfectly fine afterward. I also won’t include details here, since there was a police report… and I’ll let them stick to the official details.

Instead, the point of this post is to walk through what I did, and how I did it, during the parts that happened after the vehicles stopped moving.


Mainly, I shut up.

See, I don’t speak fluent (or conversational) French. Because of that, heated communication in an emotional time isn’t an ideal situation or decision. So, I shut up.

I moved the car out of the way, and let people do their thing. A car stopped to help, the police arrived, and we used Google Translate when necessary. I shut up. I was ignored, which isn’t pleasant… but far preferable to the alternative of being thrown off the side of the road by over-energetic bystanders who are sick of tourists.

I answered the questions posed, and kept the extra details to a minimum. And, 90min later, we were back on the road.

It wasn’t pleasant, and definitely took me a few days to fully recover from… but I’m okay with that. It happened, and we were able to move on from it. That, at the end of the day, is the only important part.