Lost in ... wait, where are we again?

Ryan has a sense of direction so remarkable that it is nearly superhuman.

My grandmother loved to tell the story about how Ryan once picked up a Honeybaked Ham from the West Broad Street store in Columbus and dropped some ham off at Aunt Dee's townhouse one Christmas Eve. By himself. After having only been to Dee's house on one prior occasion. In a snowstorm. (Really, that last part is entirely true.)

In the States, Ryan abhors Google Maps (and not just because the government could be using it to track him). He thinks map reading is a lost art that should be taught in schools.

Credit: Mark Anderson/Andertoons.com

I, on the other hand, can't get anywhere without some navigational assistance. One time I tried to get to a doctor's office in Paducah without looking it up first, and I got so turned around that I finally had to call from a McDonald's parking lot to cancel the appointment.

But this trip has forced me to admit the failings of electronic navigation. The Complete Road Atlas of Ireland is invaluable for the motorways but is hit-and-miss within cities. As we mentioned in an earlier post, the directions Booking.com provided us to get from Dublin to our Kilkenny hotel were rather lacking. I attempted to remedy this for our trip to Cork by using Google Maps. If it's Google, it has to be correct, right?

Ryan had to drive down this street without hitting anyone. Multiple times.

Nope. We spent nearly 45 minutes driving around Cork trying to find our hotel on Friday. And one of us (Ryan) really needed to use a bathroom after an impromptu tea stop in Castlemartyr. Finally, Ryan pulled over to ask for directions in a shop. The clerk had never heard of our hotel, so she had to look it up online to show the map to Ryan.

These are the directions Google gave us:

• Turn right onto Washington Street
• Turn left onto Western Road
• At the end of the road, turn right onto College Road
• Turn left onto Perrott Avenue
• The destination is on your right

These were the actual directions Ryan figured out to find the hotel by looking at the map:

• Continue on Washington Street, which turns into Western Avenue
• Turn left on Donovan's Street before the entrance to UCC
• Turn right where this street dead ends, onto College Avenue
• Make a quick left onto Perrott Avenue. This street turns into the Hayfield Manor entrance.

See the difference? An entire (major) street was missing!

Ryan's note: Elizabeth deserved a pint for her excellent navigational work.

Our navigation problems weren't restricted to driving. On Saturday, Ryan wanted to visit the house where Frank O'Connor was born. As we have learned, O'Connor is a bit out of fashion with modern Irish readers. His birthplace is home to the Munster Literature Centre. It's not even a museum. Basically it has a plaque and not much else.

The search proved tough. We spent about 20 minutes exploring and backtracking through a Cork neighborhood trying to find it. 

Ryan was at peak frustration over our inability to find the sought-after Douglas Street when we reached a major intersection. The street sign told us we had been on Douglas Street for at least two blocks without realizing it.

Rather than alternating odd and even house numbers on opposite sides of the street as we do in America, one side of Douglas Street had No. 1 through 60-something (not all houses had numbers), while the next number through No. 108 were on the other side of the street. Very confusing. So back up the street we went, looking for No. 84. Ryan believed the house was pink, and this time we found it with only two modest signs to mark its history.

Now we think we know the inspiration for U2's 1987 hit "Where the Streets Have No Name."

We learned our lesson though, and for the rest of our trip I made sure Ryan consulted a visual map and took screenshots of the streets around the final destination every time.

There was a momentary panic when I thought Dingle wasn't listed in our atlas (What I actually said: "We can't possibly be going some place too small to be on a map, can we?") Then Ryan had the brilliant realization that County Kerry is one of the parts of the republic that preserves the Irish language. We found Dingle listed under its Irish name, Daingean Uí Chúis, and plotted our route.

We survived a five-hour driving tour of the peninsula with a few minor misdirects and confusing signs. Later we found the Rock of Cashel with nearly no issues (I even took a nap in the car on that drive). Eventually we made it to the airport hotel for the night before our Wednesday flight home.

At the Rock of Cashel, an abandoned chapel and cathedral that previously was the home of the Kings of Munster (one of Ireland's four provinces).

That last morning in Ireland, Ryan suggested I ask the hotel clerk for directions to the airport.

As directed, we turned right out of the parking lot and then went left at the stoplight and were supposed to follow the highway signs from there.

That advice landed us in a private Dublin residential neighborhood and facing an Irish version of a "No outlet" sign.

Ryan grumbled mightily as he reversed. "The Irish make great beer," he said. "But they sure need lessons in signage and directions."

Sign of the day: It's in the bag

We couldn't understand why Rick Steves completely skipped Cork in his 2016 Ireland guide. I mean, it's the second largest city in the Republic with a population of 119,000 in 2011.

A view of the River Lee. 

The downtown is cut into thirds, bisected by two channels of the River Lee and has charming bridges and colorful houses. It has literally the most beautiful university campus I've ever visited, University College Cork.*

George Boole is everywhere around UCC. 

But Cork mostly seems to be a shopping haven. There isn't a lot to do.

We spent the day wandering from one shop to another, and getting lost trying to find something we had spotted earlier amid the curving streets that inexplicably become something else. To put it in perspective, Cork puts Lexington to shame on the street name-switching frustration scale. It wasn't, however, as much of an epic navigational failure as Venice. Or maybe the fact that it wasn't raining made it seem slightly better.

These girls were so engrossed in their books, they were oblivious to the shoppers rushing by. 

Amid our lazy Saturday, we stumbled across this shop name that we found amusing. That it was among the highlights of our Cork visit should tell you a little something.

They have quite a selection of d'bags.

*Librarian trivia bonus: The library at UCC is named for George Boole, who was the first mathematics professor here in the mid-19th century. And of course, the "father of the digital era" for giving us the logic that underlies computer circuits and allows for our legendary Boolean searching skills.

Sign of the day: Apocalyptic variety

Ryan unexpectedly bought a new pair of shoes in Kilkenny, and they might be his favorite thing ever.

He is so proud of them that he actually asked me to take his picture in them in front of the super swanky hotel where we are staying in Cork, the Hayfield Manor. (How swanky? There was a Jaguar in the parking lot, a practice putting green in the room itself and actual honeycomb to eat at breakfast. Swanky.)

You have to have swanky shoes to stay at such a swanky place.

If Ryan asking me to take a picture of his shoes isn't a sign of the end of times, I'm not sure what else would be. You've been warned.

Here's a close up of the Lloyd & Price shoes that started it all:

If the shoe fits ...