Ryan loses his way, more than once

Paris was kryptonite to Ryan's internal compass. He struggled mightily to get us around town. At one point, he nearly missed his 30-minute entry window for his Louvre ticket.

Ryan navigating in Reykjavik, which is exponentially easier than in Paris. 

Several city planning decisions contributed to his struggles.

• The city embraced one architectural style and stuck with it, meaning every neighborhood looks the same. 
• Like D.C., the city seems to have regulated building heights tightly. Yet somehow it was impossible to see the city's monuments (such as the Eiffel Tower) even when you're close by.
• Names are reused or similar. Sometimes you think you've gotten to the right location (Pte du Clichy), only to realize you actually needed Place du Clichy. 
• For its emphasis on uniformity, no one could decide on a single subway sign. Finding the stations is that much more challenging (when they existed at all - sometimes you simply had to walk down a staircase to find out if it was a metro stop or a parking garage). 

The cool gothic style entrances were easy to spot. 

Toward the end of our time in Paris, Ryan admitted defeat and began making decisions based on what was the opposite of his instincts. Even he will agree that we were more successful after that.

Ryan trying to get reoriented.
At least we knew which direction
the Parc Monceau was, although we weren't looking for that.

Ryan and another American tourist commiserated about never figuring out which direction was north in Paris. That was comforting for him (perhaps because I was not at all sympathetic. My exact words: "This is how I feel when navigating everywhere, all the time. It sucks.")

Ryan without his superpower did make me a little nervous about picking up the rental car within metro Paris and successfully driving it out of the city to head to our last destination, Bayeux. 

While Ryan might be stubborn, he's also smart. He bucked his deeply entrenched aversion to GPS and requested it in the rental car. The constantly recalculated routes were a godsend as we tried to get on the A13. The GPS also allowed us to add an unplanned side trip to Mont-Saint-Michel.

Ryan was effusive in his praise of this GPS experience, much to the surprise of his mother. So he added the caveat: "Only in Paris. They're still totally ridiculous everywhere else."

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."