Thursday, February 05, 2009

Fly Away

I purchased our roundtrip tickets to Ireland today!!  I'm all bouncy now.  Choosing seats on the plane,  the agent printing out our itinerary, finding out about carry-on restrictions (1 40 pound bag that can fit into overhead, separate laptop bag is fine) and all that made our trip feel much more real.  We paid a very pretty penny for it, but it's still relatively inexpensive compared to the rest of Europe.  Tomorrow I'll go back with a list of the hotels we want to stay at as well as setting up the arrangements for the bed and breakfast stuff.  The hotels we can either book normally online or through the agency, but the bed and breakfast thing is technically a 'request' through a third party that negotiates with folks in Ireland.  They can say no, but they'll offer an alternative that costs about the same--they don't turn people away from doing touristy stuff.  It's a new thing for me, so I'm a little nervous, but nervous in a good way.  I'm very curious about how it'll be to stay at those places and how easy it'll be to find them.

Every place we're staying offers a complementary breakfast.  The rest of the meals we're on our own.  

I am really looking forward to this on so many levels that it's hard to resist making a long row of exclamation points.

Oh, what the heck.  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Even though it's way early, I'll be making sure our passports are all in order and I'll start making lists of what we'll bring.  This is one trip that we won't be bringing any extraneous bs.  Everything will be compact, practical and durable.  There are tons of suggested packing lists online and I plan to go over them closely.  The emphasis lately has been bare necessities and packing light.  Lots more people are traveling with only carry-on.  I don't know if we'll pull that off but we'll definitely try.  If we can't quite manage to travel that light, I'll aim for one checked bag between the three of us.  I hear that everything there will be smaller than we're used to, including the cars, so I want to make sure that we don't have to sit on our luggage when we tour around.

Yay Ireland!  






7 comments:

Molly said...

Awesome - when are you going?

The Moody Minstrel said...

*heavy sigh*

(trudges away dejectedly...)

Word verification: ablyss - A mlovie ablout aliens benleath the slea wlith gleat splecial efflects blut a slucky endling.

Kai Jones said...

So cool!

Kami said...

End of April through early May. We're hoping to stay at least one night in a castle. We have a flexible self-driven tour package that will carry us as far as we're willing to drive. I hope to take a peek at most, if not all, the counties in the Republic. I don't think we'll have time to also include Northern Ireland. We'll have to wait and see! I'm still uncertain as to how large Ireland is.

Don't be sad, Moody. Think of all the icky stout you won't have to drink!

The Moody Minstrel said...

I LOVE stout! }:-(

sophie said...

If you're used to the US, it's not that big.

Wow.

(like that was really helpful. It's a few hours drive across country and closer to a day to the bottom. But it's been a lo-ong time.)

Kami said...

Actually that was really helpful! It'll help ease my mind as far as itineraries. We're going with an independent, flexible plan where we can stop by bed and breakfast places wherever and whenever we want without advance warning. We don't want to drive a lot on a given day, and yet we want to see most of the counties, so this info makes me believe that's it's doable without turning into a grueling exercise in cross-country travel.

Repeat after me, Moody. Stout is icky. Feel better?

I wish I could take everyone with us.