5 Days and the Ireland adventure begins!

As I sit here on this dreary Sunday, the ONLY thing I can think about is in 5 days my travel partner Renee and I will be headed to Dublin Ireland for the first time! Honestly I can barely sleep I am so excited.

It’s kinda crazy cause although I have wanted to go to Ireland, I was never as obsessed by it like Paris. The thing is, everyone that has ever traveled there told me I will love it. I have never heard one single person say they would never go back. This made me think that all those people cannot be wrong. It showed me that perhaps Ireland is a very special place. Will it ever take the place of my beloved Paris? That seems unlikely, but then again, who knows.

Anyway, it seems the last couple of weeks it has finally sunk in that this is happening.

10 months of planning…

The real planning began in February. We probably would have started earlier, but we waited until U2 announced the dates of their Dublin shows for their current Experience + Innocence tour (yeah I’m a crazy fan). Once that was announced, the real planning began. I will be sharing all my Ireland trip planning details in my post next week.

You can read my U2 story here.

And here we go…!

We land in Dublin late morning and after the luggage is gathered, transportation to our hotel, and settling in is done, it will be time to explore. I can only hope that we can sleep on the overnight flight (any tips on this, please comment!). We have an action packed 3 days in Dublin planned. The last event, seeing U2 on Monday night. Before that, we plan on seeing the major Dublin sights. Being that there will be a mass pilgrimage of U2 fans flocking to the city, there will be things going on, people I want to meet, and a U2 taxi tour to all the major sights. I have this insane push/pull  to doing all these U2 things (It will probably never happen again that I am in Dublin and seeing them), and taking in everything in Dublin. This is why it’s probably a good thing that we added another couple days for Dublin at the end.

After all that U2 excitement, it will be time to explore the beautiful Irish landscape with a day in Kilkenny, 2 days in Dingle, and 3 days in Galway before heading back. We also wedged in a bus tour to Belfast and the Giants Causeway at the end of the trip.

Being that we will have limited daylight to explore outside, I’m thinking our nights will be filled with good old fashioned pub life and listening to some Irish music. I’d love to come home with stories of encounters with locals and lots of laughter.

We have a very rough itinerary planned with a list of things we want to see, but not so much that every hour is accounted for. Although I know it’s hard, but I like to go into a trip with the intent of returning. That’s pretty easy since I don’t have a thirst for visiting as many places as I can. I’m more of a dig in deep to a destination I love and experience it again and again person. It’s like going to the same place for summer vacation year after year. I love the familiar feel.

With that, I’ve got that nervous, excited, can’t sleep feeling. It’s gonna be a long week of waiting. Now we are faced with just days and not months to wait. Soon it will be hours. I’m confident that it will be a trip to remember and look forward to sharing pictures and thoughts along the way on all my social channels. I hope you follow along!

Go explore! The world is waiting.

Lori