Day 4: Picking Up our Nissan Tiida

We awoke bright and early thanks to our handy wake-up call. After packing up the rest of our luggage and checking out of the hotel, we headed towards the supermarket for some last minute snacks. We didn't stock up nearly as much as we had earlier in the week, but picked up some more digestivo cookies, an Irish fruit cake for Chad's father, chocolates, and other small goodies. We then took the Flybus back to Dublin Airport where we were to check in at the Enterprise counter.

Now I must give some back story on how we determined what car rental company to use. We must have done research for at least two months before narrowing down the choices. We mainly used the reviews on TripAdvisor.com for our advice (a website I highly recommend regardless of your destination). One thing was certain after reading as many reviews of car rental companies as we could find: most try to scam customers out of as much money as possible. They seem to be unpopular for assessing fees after the car is turned in, claiming that the renters caused more than normal "wear and tear". Since we were on a tight budget, I wanted to minimize the risk of this happening to us.

The other main issue that arose when we were researching car rental was the fact that we would be considered underage (under 24) since the driver, Chad, would be 23 at the time. There are several additional fees because of this minor inconvenience and it increased our car rental cost by nearly 50%. Many car rental companies would not even allow us to rent from them so this slightly hindered our search.

After considerable weighing of our options and research, I made the decision to go with Enterprise. Chad favored another company, Dan Dooley, but in the end he supported my choice. However, that did not mean that he would allow me to forget that the decision was ultimately mine. So imagine my annoyance when we discovered that the Enterprise counter (empty at this point) was hidden in a dark, back corner of the hallway with the car rental companies. At this point, Chad had a very smug look on his face and made a comment about the fact that we walked past people working at the Dan Dooley counter.

We waited for at least fifteen minutes and I grew more irritable as each minute passed, though we were an entire hour early for check-in. Finally, a young girl about our age rushed into the booth to check us in. She was very friendly and everything went as we expected until we got to discussing extra insurance or the super CDW as it is called. We knew that this was something that we wanted to purchase, but had not been able to find out the cost prior to our trip. Unfortunately, the Enterprise girl informed us that the super CDW would cost more due to our being underage. She said that underage Americans are considered to be in the same risk category as Jamicans and Israelis (I would like to see the statistics backing this up) so the super CDW would cost us double the amount that it costs other drivers. Since the super CDW lowered our maximum liability from 1000 euro to 300 euro, we took it despite the higher cost.

We were all set to sign the paperwork and I think Chad had a bit of a heart palpitation when he saw the final dollar amount. It was quite a downer because it included all the costs, like our underage fee, regular CDW, super CDW, actual car rental, and taxes, but then it also included a hold for 250 euro in case of accident or damage. On top of all that, the girl was kind enough to convert it to dollars and so we got to see the total damage in our true currency immediately instead of on our credit card statement. Let's just say at this point we were unsure of whether the car rental was such a good idea.

After our hearts started beating fairly regularly again, we were picked up by an Enterprise shuttle bus and taken to the rental facility. On the Enterprise website we were informed that the highest level of car we could rent, because of our young age, was a class B economy. This meant that we were expecting a crappy two door, such as a Chevy Aveo, that was in less than stellar condition and probably reeked of cigarette smoke. We were quite taken abake to see a spotless and quite new four door Nissan Tiida waiting for us in the parking lot. Despite trying our darndest to find a scratch or something wrong with the exterior, the most we could find was a few scratches on the back bumper. This meant that any damage we did to the car would be blatantly noticable and made us nervous for the rest of the entire trip.

I'll let Chad take it from here and write about his first European driving experience.