April 4 - En route to Ireland!

The blog is back! I'm going to try REALLY REALLY hard to be a good blogger and post at least every other day. It won't be hard for me to improve on my last stint at blogging - on our Costa Rica trip I started out with great intentions and ended up only blogging for three days.  Apparently I became much too lazy once the "pura vida" mindset kicked in.  I'll do my best, as I know that many friends and family members have told me how much they are looking forward to reading all about our adventures in Ireland - gastronomic and otherwise!

It's hard for us to believe, but we are finally on our way to Ireland! 8 months after we booked our trip and 9 months after we started thinking of Ireland as our destination, it's feeling rather surreal to actually be going on our vacation.

It's great, because we're leaving on Brandon's birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRANDON! We were joking and saying "ok, it's your birthday, we'll go to Ireland...." It's his birthday trip for both of us. Lucky me! We left Denver at 0845 Thursday morning, and will arrive in Dublin at 0515 Friday morning with a stop in Chicago O'Hare along the way. The flight from Chicago to Dublin on Aer Lingus is only 7 hours - pretty short for an international trip.  The flight is similar to our flight from JFK to Casablanca in that sense. It's totally different in the sense that this time around we're on a really nice airplane with great legroom and comfy chairs. When we flew Air Maroc to Casablanca, the airplane was pretty rickety. It's become a joke of ours whenever we're on a plane: "this plane is brand new compared to our flight to Casablanca!" However, the record should show that on the way back from Morocco on Air Maroc we were on a nice safe feeling plane, and the crew both directions was wonderful and friendly.

When we arrive in Dublin we'll head to get our rental car.  We finally ended up deciding on an automatic transmission. We were going to go with a manual at first (Brandon hardly ever drives a manual) because getting an automatic was about $300 more, but we decided that it might be safer not to add having the stick shift on our left side rather than right in addition to driving on the other side of the road! Also, BONUS - Brandon just told me that we ended up not paying anything additional for our automatic car! What a bargainer. Once we get our car, we're going to head to the hotel that we'll be staying in Friday night, drop our bags, and then head out to explore Dublin. We are pretty sure that there is either a train or a bus right by our hotel that runs to central Dublin, or ideally we will walk there.  We're hoping this is the case so that we can be on foot rather than driving in the city center.  Our goal is to walk as much as possible. :) We'll be doing LOTS of hiking as well. We have planned several days at Killarney National Park and Connemara National Park, while also planning to hike Croagh (pronounced 'croak') Patrick in the northwest of Ireland.  All of these wonderful places will of course be in addition to the many miles we will walk while exploring the towns and villages we'll be staying in.  All of you who know us know that we are major history nerds, and there are so many exciting historical sights that we're planning on seeing. Hurray!!! We'll be spending 17 days driving around the entire country of Ireland, mainly along the coast the whole way. Our only commitments are our hotel reservations (mostly wonderful looking bed and breakfasts) and our flight home. We'll be hitting a lot of the well known highlights, and we've also made our own list of lesser known things we really want to see. They are mostly a mix of historical sights and hiking/nature trips.



We have a few sights we want to see in Dublin, but we've been told that its very very cosmopolitan and feels like being in New York City or London. Since Brandon and I are all about experiencing the local culture and history, we've only planned one and a half days in Dublin.  This is similar to our Morocco trip in that we only spent one day in Casablanca for the same reason. On Saturday morning we'll get in our little car and head south to Kilkenny.

We're really excited about discovering the Irish countryside and food!!! We don't really know much about Irish cuisine other than the usual items - Irish stew, Shepherd's Pie, and lots of lamb and fish dishes. It's so exciting to be discovering lots of new food and styles of cooking.  We spent time in the O'Hare airport looking at places for breakfast in Dublin.

In short: Us being together after a month of living apart + traveling to a new country + great food + history + tons of hiking = 17 days of pure bliss! To say that we're excited would be an understatement (WE'RE REALLY REALLY REALLY EXCITED!!!!!!!!).

I hope that everyone will tune in to read about our adventures! I'll do my best to write often and hopefully well.

Xoxo!

Linds