A Trip of a Lifetime

Eons ago, when I was graduating from High School, my parents offered me a graduation trip to New York to see my aunt in upstate, and my cousin in NYC.  Having been to New York five years before, I jumped at the chance to return and convinced my Mom to go with me.  I’ve always loved the memory of that trip.  Seeing the shore of Lake Ontario, enjoying a boat ride on one of the Finger Lakes, driving by all the vineyards of upstate New York, riding the train from Syracuse to Grand Central Station, seeing a Broadway Play, shopping on 5th Avenue.  It was fantastic. 

Fast forward twenty some years and my own son was nearing his senior year.  We decided to offer him a trip as a graduation present.  He could choose the destination. To our surprise, he picked Europe.  None of us had ever travelled internationally, and since we decided this would likely be a once in a lifetime trip, we each wrote down our top 3 destinations.  London was at the top of Trey’s list, and Ireland at the top of Mike’s and mine.  

In the planning stages, we considered fitting in Scotland, Germany and/or Prague… #fomo. Ultimately we decided to focus on London and Ireland instead of squeezing so much in that we would need a vacation from vacation.  As May got closer, I tried to find a travel agent that would be willing to help us plan our trip, knowing (and not caring) that it would cost a pretty penny for their help.  I’d reach out, tell them what we wanted to do (which did not include cruises, tours, etc), and…crickets.   

So I dove into researching, researching and more researching.  Possibly one of the hazards of the career I have chosen is the close proximity I have to engineers every day.   When planning this trip, I realized some of their tendencies have started to rub off on me (shhh don’t tell them…or my husband).  I spent more time than I care to think about figuring out the best places to stay, planning our route, deciding if it would be better to fly into London first or Dublin first, should we take a train from London to northern England and then a ferry to Dublin, or fly from London to Dublin, hotels or B&B’s, drive in Ireland or do a tour.  Hours upon hours I spent.  I was terrified to make the wrong decision. 

Finally in February, on one particularly cold day, we booked our airfare, which at least locked us into dates, and where we were starting and ending.  We’d fly from Bismarck to London on May 24th and fly from Dublin to Bismarck on June 9th.  Phew – one step done.   

Then the rest of the research commenced.   We decided on 5 days in London, then flying from London to Cork and spending the rest of the trip in Ireland.  I learned so much in the planning stages of this trip that I would like to share.  Over the next few Fridays I’ll walk you through our trip to the UK and Ireland, why we stayed where we did, what we would do over again and what we would change.  I’ll also link to any resources I found helpful and share a bit on our packing/traveling philosophy.   Buckle up – this is going to be fun! See you on the flip side.