Welcome back to my series of blog posts on the “Top 30 Things I Learned in Ireland.” In Part 3, I’m revealing six things I discovered while attempting to sleep, shower, and not get lost in various hotels and B&Bs across Ireland.

#16 Hotel Floor and Room Numbers Apparently Use New Math

Upon checking in at one hotel in Ireland, we were handed keycards for room 301. Easy, we thought; since we’re starting on the ground floor, that must mean we go up two flights of stairs to reach the third floor and find room 301, right? Wrong. By this point, we already knew that in European nations the ground floor is floor 0, and going up two stories only gets you to the 2nd floor, not the 3rd floor. Got it. Sort of. Then it hit us, did the front desk just say that room 301 was on the 1st floor? That made exactly zero sense. We went up one flight of stairs and found rooms starting in the 100s. Hmm… apparently math works differently here. Then we spotted a sign with an arrow pointing toward rooms 300 and up. We followed it like the confused tourists we are and, sure enough, discovered room 301 on the second floor, which, for reasons known only to the Europeans, is labeled the first floor.

#17 Elevators only come in Extra Small

Whoever designed the roads in Ireland must also have been responsible for designing the elevators/lifts. Unlike those in the US, there is no way one could drive an F250 into one of them, let alone fit four people, each with a carry-on and a personal item.

#18 Beware the “Main” Light Switch

Determining which light switch controls which light is not always obvious, even in the US. However, Ireland has taken this to a new level. For starters, all bathroom light switches in Ireland are on the wall outside the bathroom. It’s really annoying if you want to turn the light on without disturbing someone sleeping in the same hotel room, but at least it’s consistent. The real trouble is that most hotel rooms have “main” switches that turn all the lights off. This isn’t a bad idea, except that there is no consistency as to where it’s located and it isn’t always labeled. Sometimes, we found multiple main switches by accident. Turn it off when going to sleep and voilà, the bedside lights go off, which is all good until you leave the bed and try to turn on a different light and find out it doesn’t work because the main was turned off.

In the last hotel we stayed at in Dublin, there was a mysterious switch in the closet. Flipping it on produced a very suspicious buzzing noise and absolutely no visible change in the room lighting, so we just assumed we’d started up either a secret massage bed or a small nuclear reactor next door.

#19 Don’t Expect the Beds to have a Top Sheet

In a country where most hotels and inns don’t believe in air conditioning, you’d think they’d at least throw in a top sheet. Instead, you’re given two options for sleep: absolutely nothing, or a heavy comforter full of sweaters that the wool stores weren’t able to unload on the tourists. Fortunately, as an American, the right to a top sheet was added to the US Constitution. When people talk about the Irish saying “Top of the morning” (which they don’t, disappointingly), they obviously aren’t referring to a top sheet. I will, however, give the Irish kudos for providing windows that open and tabletop fans in every hotel room, even if all they tend to do is swirl the warm, moist air around. But don’t get me started on the lack of window screens, especially when they put up little signs to remind guests to close the windows at night to prevent bugs from being hotel guests as well.

#20 Hotel Showers are Luxurious

The best part of hotels in Ireland? The showers. None of the places we stayed had a bathtub, opting instead for wonderful walk-in showers. The shower controls, however, were like piloting a small spaceship—push this, twist that, and hope for the best. And the more expensive the hotel, the more complicated they became, even for the same features. Most of the showers had both a handheld showerhead and a rain showerhead. I mostly stuck with the handheld, since I’d already had plenty of overhead rain throughout the day, courtesy of the Irish weather.

#21 You can stay in a Real Castle

In Dublin alone, there are no fewer than eight castle hotels, because the Irish never know when someone of royalty just happens to swim across to the island. We spent our last night in Ireland at the Clontarf Castle Hotel, a much-modernised castle dating back to 1837, which in metric years basically makes it a teenager. While the rooms themselves were your fairly standard hotel setup, the rest of the place delivered all the grand, dramatic castle vibes you secretly hope for when you realise you’re technically sleeping in a medieval fortress.

To be continued…

Stay tuned for Part 4, where I reveal everything I learned about dining out in Ireland.