One day to go - Plan? or not Plan

 Hello and welcome back.

Boy it is getting hard to contain our excitement.  It is getting very real now as we are all packed, the house sitter has arrived, and we have checked in for our flight and have our boarding passes.  IT'S HAPPENING!

So, what is our plan?  and how did we choose it.

One very important goal of the trip is to meet some relatives I (Jim) have in southeast Ireland.  Several members of my family have visited County Kilkenny, Ireland and met many of our cousins that live in this area.  I really hope to be able to find the farm my grandmother (Nana) grew up on before coming to America.  I have been in touch with a cousin who lives outside Kilkenny and we are really looking forward to meeting her and hopefully some other relatives.

Beyond that, we want to get away from the primary tourist roads, see the countryside and meet some smalltown locals.  Anita took a bus tour of Ireland several years ago that let her see a lot of the country, just not spend a lot time in any one place.  It was pretty rushed and neither of us had any interest in doing that kind of thing.  We wanted to stay in small towns, in B & B's over pubs, whenever we could and get to talk local people if possible.

We planned this whole trip ourselves.  (With input from friends, family and people we know that have made a similar trip.)  We spent an unbelievable amount of time on the internet reading other peoples blogs, seeing what they did and reading their reviews.

So with all this input, we came up with a pretty big list of things we could do.  Which, of course, had to be pared down to something that we could have a reasonable expectation of accomplishing under the golden rule of not being rushed and remaining relaxed.

The one thing we wanted above all else with this trip was to avoid feeling rushed and harried.  We deliberately are remaining pretty flexible with when and where we plan to be.  The furthest we have planned to drive in any one day is less than a hundred miles.  Easy drives, with lots of time to stop along the way if the mood hits us. 

We made our own flight and car rental reservations directly over the internet.

Once we decided on a "most likely" route - we went into Google Earth, on to Street View and drove almost all of the planned route.

As a matter of fact, almost all of lodgings were identified from Street View.  As we were on our virtual drive through, we would see a little pub with a sign that said accommodations, see if we could find it on the internet, and if it looked good, we contacted them about reserving a room.  Pretty cool.

Obviously, we had to make some hard reservations for the more touristy things that fill up quickly. We both wanted to get out on the Aran Islands (Inish More) Well that takes a ferry boat ride that fills up quickly, as does the tour around the island.  So, we picked a day and made the reservations for the ferry and B & B.  It turned out that there is a Folk music festival in the same area on the mainland, so we are staying a couple days there.

Here is a pretty general Map of our planned travel route. (Green lines are side trips from places we are staying.)

In general, we decided once we left the Kilkenny area (where the red star is on the map) we would make clockwise loop around southern Ireland.

Nothing is shown for getting from Galway back to Dublin.  Things are still pretty fluid after Galway.  Depending on what we make out with relatives, we may head back to Kilkenny for the final few days of our trip.  Or we make a long drive from Galway to Dublin directly and spend our last few days sightseeing in Dublin.  No definite plans yet for those final 3 - 4 days.

There's an old saying, or maybe it's a quote from a movie, that goes something like: "You always need a plan.  It doesn't have to be a good plan, you just need a plan."

So here is our "plan"  It is highly unlikely that our trip will fall out exactly as listed below.  But it is suggested agenda, than a "cast-in-stone" plan.  We'll see what we get into once we are there.

And we will be sure to keep everyone updated through this blog.

Tomorrow is a travel day, so don't expect another update until Saturday. (But I might get bored sitting in the airport, so you never know.)

Next post is likely from the Emerald Isle.

...A & J Wood