Traveling The Emerald Isle

Ireland has always been on my must-see list, and I finally got to go there when I was 25. There are so many things I learned on my trip that I'll be relating here, both for myself in the future and for anyone who is looking for advice. There are some things I didn't believe from other blog posts that ended up being (disastrously) true.

One of the things I read so many times was that you don’t want to cram in too much in one trip. As a starting schoolteacher, I don’t make much money, and I was afraid I would never get another opportunity to go to all the places I want to go, so I went to Ireland for 2 whole weeks and crammed in everything I could. That was a big mistake.

Our flight left from Atlanta in the morning and we had a 5 hour layover in New York, where we boarded with Aer Lingus. Aer Lingus doesn't have much leg room, so that overnight flight was already less than desirable. There was a toddler sitting in front of us that kept hollering/waving to his grandparents a few aisles ahead… and the kid was just getting warmed up. We had planned on taking some Advil PM and sleeping through the night with our neck pillows, but that was out of the question. By midnight he was running up and down the aisles, which he did for at least half of the flight, and then when he was done running, he sat in front of us and cried the whole time.

Needless to say, we were exhausted the first day, and because of everything I had planned, by the 3rd day we were dragging our feet. We toughed it out - sometimes miserably, as you’ll see in my following posts. From now on, I’m not going on vacations for more than 5 days. Take it from me- don’t set your schedule in stone (you'll be really disappointed when your car gets trapped behind a herd of cows for an hour), don't plan too much in one day, and be open to exploring and meeting new people.

This blog post is about the general things (packing, driving, money, and accommodations). In my following posts I'll take you through my day-to-day trip with commentary. I planned it all myself with the help of some guidebooks, so I'll have lots of comments for improvement!

WHAT TO PACK:

Check the weather before you go, and pack for cool and rainy weather!

Thankfully, I didn’t take this part with a grain of salt, but my boyfriend did…. He never listens to me. When we went to Orlando in February, he packed long sleeves, pants, and jackets, while I packed t-shirts, shorts, and bathing suits. With this trip I packed a raincoat, 1 pair of shorts, a couple t-shirts, pants, a scarf, and LOTS of layers. My boyfriend didn’t bring any long sleeved shirts, and he brought 1 jacket and 1 pair of tennis shoes. He was freezing and soaking wet the whole time.

Now, when I went to England back in 2014, they had a heat wave and I wore shorts almost the entire time. And when one of my students went to Ireland the year before I went, there was a heat wave as well and he wore shorts the whole time. But these are rare occasions. There are 2 types of weather in Ireland- “raining” and “about to rain.” And the temperature never got above the 70s, so when it was 50-60 degrees and raining/windy with the sun not out, it felt freezing. Be sure to pack lots of warm clothes as well as some cool ones for your trip, as the weather there can be unpredictable.

What's nice about all that rain, though, is it gives the island what it's known for - the green, rolling hills. It was absolutely gorgeous when we went, and many people told me the summer they had the heat wave, their grass was turning brown by the end of it. Despite the sometimes miserable weather, I'm so glad we went to Ireland when we did.

We also noticed that the closer we were to Dublin, the warmer it was. This might have just been how our trip turned out, but it got colder and rainier the closer we got to the west coast.

If it was pouring, I wore rain boots, but mostly I wore tennis shoes because boots feel heavy and hot to my feet. I stuck an extra pair of shoes in my backpack in case they got drenched. Speaking of my backpack, it came in handy! It held a folder with our itinerary and all the tickets we pre-ordered, a map of Dublin, and my little notebook where I wrote down everything we spent (I’m a penny pincher). I also had a small travel bag from when I went to London that went around my neck and I tucked under my shirt. I used this daily, although I think Ireland has a lot less pick pockets than London - I was mostly worried about the bigger cities we went to. I kept the cash I might need for the day in the travel bag and all but one of my credit cards (the rest I kept at the airbnb, along with my passport) so that I wouldn't worry about setting down my backpack.

NAVIGATING:

Repeat after me: I will not be afraid to rent a car in Ireland. Also: left lane. Every time I turned I made my boyfriend say "left lane" so I remembered which lane to turn into. It's really liberating to rent a car and drive around the country yourself. There are day tours from Dublin, but you won’t want to wait for a tour bus each time you want to leave the city.

We booked our rental car with Avis. We had the option of paying damage to the car afterwards, or just paying a certain amount per day upfront. If we paid upfront they wouldn’t charge extra for damage, really the only way they’d charge us extra was if we lost the key to the car or did something like put diesel in the tank (the gas/"petrol" pumps there are green! Weird, huh?). We paid the extra money up front (it ended up being about $400 to cover the full 2 weeks), which was a GREAT decision because the roads in Ireland are extremely narrow. When you get off the highways, they’re about as wide as one-lane roads in the US, and they’re lined by stone walls. We tore up the wheel of our car because of all the times we practically drove off the road and hit the stone. (It’s easy to do, especially if there is a bus coming your way. Buses have the right of way in Ireland, so you just have to sit there and hold your breath while they pass, hoping they don't scrape your car.)

We also paid extra for a car with automatic transmission (most cars over there are manual), and I’m so glad we did- I had planned on my boyfriend driving the whole time and he knows how to work a stick shift, but he broke his arm 2 days before we left. I’ve learned it’s better to not try to save money on important decisions like that (you can save with food and airbnbs!).

I paid for a navigation system because I didn’t believe all the blog posts that said they were useless and also I wanted a back-up, but trust me, even if (when) I got lost, the navigation system still would’ve been useless. Don’t waste your money on it. We ended up using our phones' maps app. I'd planned on getting a SIM card for my phone to use data/calls/texts over there for cheaper, but I didn’t know that I actually had to request the phone company to allow me to replace the SIM card before I got over there. I tried to buy one from SPAR in the airport but the cashier told me it wouldn’t work if we tried to put it in my phone. We got lost the first day and decided to just bite the bullet, and Verizon sent my boyfriend a text message saying he could pay $10 for 24 hours of calls, text, data, etc., with no additional charges. We actually ended up doing that almost every day, and though it wracked up a few charges we weren't expecting, it definitely saved us. I would recommend talking to your cell phone provider about an international plan before going over there.

I wouldn’t recommend driving around Dublin yourself. I had to drive through Cork once, which was a little nerve-wracking, but we survived. From what I read about Dublin, it’s really chaotic to drive through, though I can’t speak from experience. We took a taxi once late at night because the bus was taking forever, and after seeing four homeless people fighting in the street, we decided to hightail it out of there. We had to take the train from Swords (where we were staying) into/out of Dublin (it can be confusing late at night- we had help from locals when we had to switch trains), and walked/took buses around Dublin, and I remember it costing around 2 euros for the bus, 3.50 (or "3,50" as they write it there) euros for the train.

Side note- the gas over there was a lot more expensive than the USA when we went. The price of “petrol” went by the liter, so when I was looking at the prices online I thought, that isn’t so bad! But 1 liter of petrol is 1/4 gallons of gas, so it was 4 times as much money as we were expecting. Good thing Ireland’s a pretty small country, but it definitely added some unexpected costs to our trip!

Another side note- I didn't see a single police/garda car while I was driving. Turns out they clock your speed with cameras in Europe and send you the tickets later. One couple we met told us they'd just received a 300 euro ticket from a trip to Italy they'd taken a year before. So don't speed!

MONEY:

No one in Ireland accepts the Discover card! However, I read a lot that not many places accepted credit cards, and that wasn’t totally true. I used my Bank of America travel credit card a LOT. Buses don’t accept credit cards, and some places you tour may not accept credit cards, but it's really easy to find out before you go if they accept cards with a google search. When I was trying to buy a ticket for a parking garage, my Bank of America card was rejected, I think because the chip reader on the machine didn’t work, so I had to use my regular bank card. I told each banking company that I’d be in Ireland for those specific dates, so I’m really glad I thought ahead.

My boyfriend requested 800 euros in cash from the bank before we went as well. They charged a $50 fee to get it, and then we didn’t end up using a lot of it. I would recommend having some cash in euros as a back up (a hundred or two was all we needed for the 2 weeks) just in case. We also bought as many admission tickets online as possible so that we wouldn’t be turned away when we got there, and we wouldn’t have to worry about paying for it when we got there.

You can always go to an ATM if you need cash- we went to one in Dublin and one in Cork, so they’re definitely in the big cities, but I’m not too fond of the extra fees.

ACCOMMODATIONS:

I have guide books recommending the best hotels, but we didn’t stay in a single one. We booked accommodation through airbnb. It was the first time I’d ever done such a thing, and I was a little afraid of staying in strangers' homes, but it actually turned out amazing. We were able to stay in much more affordable places, which made it possible for us to stay the whole 2 weeks. The places we stayed were beautiful, safe, and the people were so accommodating.

We stayed in Swords the first night so that we wouldn’t have to worry about driving through Dublin. The house we stayed at that night was the most modern, with central heating and cooling controlled by a wall thermostat, which was wonderful. We didn’t realize that this wouldn’t be the case the entire time. We didn’t know how to work the radiators at the houses, so we ended up wearing layers a lot of the time, and halfway through the trip we figured out that these little plug-in fan-looking things that had been in most of our rooms were actually space heaters!

We got a lot of whole "apartments" to ourselves, which was really convenient, but reserving a single room also has its benefits. When we reserved one room, we would get the chance to interact with our hosts. We arrived in Swords in the morning and our host sat down with us and told us all the things in Dublin we needed to see. He also drove us a couple minutes down the road to the train station so that we could leave the rental car at his house. Another night we stayed at a farm and since I'm a horsewoman, I talked with the man of the house for an hour about horses and all the horsey things we were doing around the country. I told his daughter I'm a musician and she looked up all the local trad sessions that would be taking place that weekend. One lady even baked us an apple pie to eat before we got to her BnB! The Irish are known for being friendly and accommodating. Take the opportunity to meet some locals and have some conversations!