Planning Ireland

Land of A Thousand Welcomes You made it! Congratulations. Bags in hand, you're anxious to start your vacation in Ireland. What better way than a few days in Dublin.  Get your "feet wet" in a new country without having to worry about driving on the left with a manual shift car.  Cars and Dublin don't mix well so it's best to wait to rent a car until you're ready to travel the Ireland countryside.   That leaves you with the dilemma of getting from the airport into Dublin.  Not to worry.  There are many ways to get to your hotel.  Check your hotel, B&B, etc. site for the exact address.  Most hotels will also list directions by bus, car, rail, and taxi.  Once you know exactly where you're going, you can determine how best to get there.  Buses and taxis are readily available at the airport but they will generally require cash so it's best to stop at an airport ATM before heading out to your transport. Many touris...

How to Choose Your Accommodation  and When to Book How to Choose Your Accommodation This is a really important decision to make because people like to travel in different ways.  For example,  my idea of roughing it is a clean motel with very hot water.  So right from the beginning I knew I would not be camping in Ireland but, for some, camping is the only way to go.   There are several types of accommodation available to you in Ireland:  hotels (3 star, 4 star, and 5 star); Bed and breakfasts (3 star, 4 star, and 5 star); Air b&b; VRBO (vacation rental by owner); hostels; self-catering; and, camping.  Each type of accommodation has it's pros and cons.  We opted for a combination of hotels, VRBO, and self-catering.  We've done Air b&b before and had no problems but couldn't find what we wanted when we were looking to book. Once we had our basic itinerary and knew which sites, towns, cities, etc. we wanted to visit an...

After the Travel Guides It took us a couple of months to identify the sites we wanted to see and the areas to visit.  As we had been to Ireland before, we had seen a lot of the big tourist sites but some we wanted to revisit.  Our next step was to locate our 1001 (just a slight.... exaggeration) must sees on a map of Ireland. It's really good to have a map of Ireland that is all on one page and big enough to distinguish individual towns.  That helps to give you an overall sense of the distances between sites and what sites are grouped together. However, you also need a larger atlas that will show you specific areas in a larger  format.  We chose, Collins Ireland Comprehensive Road Atlas.   We located each place we were interested in seeing using sticky notes while referencing our larger map as well.  When we were finished we could tell at a glance which areas of the country held the most sites of interest for our trip. Now comes the hard ...

  Ireland Dream Vacation 18 Months Ahead Ireland ....  We visited Ireland in 2016 with two brothers, two sisters-in-law, and a couple of friends.  It was a bit of a family reunion and the first we'd had for quite some time.  Our family has roots in Ireland and, when the trip presented itself, we all decided to go. It was a 15 day bus trip circumnavigating Ireland visiting all the typical sites one visits on a bus trip.  It was our first bus trip and a good overview of Ireland but not the way we typically like to travel.  Family made it fun but we wanted to return and see all the things that were not on the designated itinerary.  So, this time, we're planning our "Dream Vacation" ...and it takes planning. How to Start We started with a Budget.  Then we chose a time of year.  Then we started reading travel books, on-line travel sites and blogs.  The reading generated lists of things we might want to see and parts of Irela...