The pre trip planning posts will always be longer than the actual trip posts because its a PLAN!

Travel Decisions

How do you decide your travel adventures? Pick a place from your bucket list? Point to a map? It is never an easy decision to make because if you are like us THERE IS SO MUCH TO CHOOSE FROM! From traveling around this country to taking a trip across an ocean, to going to your old favorite stand by beach, no matter the distance there are decisions to make.

Ireland, why Ireland and why specifically The Wild Atlantic Way? Back in 2015 we visited Ireland with some friends and of course fell in love! The people, the scenery, and the music. Ireland ticks all the boxes for us. When we traveled there we generally followed the southern west coast route hitting a lot of “must do” items. This included the Dingle Peninsula, Killarney, Kilkenny, Kinsale and Doolin. Some of those places are on the southern part of The Wild Atlantic Way so it seemed natural to head north if we ever got back to the Emerald Isle.

Planning Flights

Once a decision was made to go to Ireland the fun part for me started! Knowing we would be going north I started to research where we should fly into. I went back and forth between the two major airports; Shannon International (SNN) on the west coast and Dublin International (DUB) on the east. While it made sense to fly into Shannon on the west coast I came across a great price from our local, Hartford CT International (BDL), airport from Dublin. Normally an international flight is cheaper out of Boston International (BOS) TIP: always search for flights incognito mode on your computer and search multiple airports for the best prices. Watch for flights opening up in your local airport, another way to score a good flight at a great price!

Interestingly, flying into Dublin and driving across to County Donegal was not that much further driving so we booked! I booked these flights October 9th for a May departure. We paid $1298.00 for both tickets. It could have possibly been a little cheaper if I had waited, however, $650 for a European ticket coming out of the pandemic seemed reasonable. With the flights and dates under my belt I was free to start the dreaming about where we will go!

Planning the Route

One of our favorite places we went in 2015 was Doolin https://doolin.ie/. We needed to work in another stay in this magical town with three pubs all within walking distance of each other. Besides being touted as the “home of Irish music” and the gateway to the Aran Islands, the scenery is stunning. I remember thinking the last time we visited “can I just live here”! We determined to hit Doolin last before driving back over to Dublin airport at the end of our trip as a familiar and relaxing end to our trip.

With knowing where we wanted to end, we then started at the beginning. Our last trip informed this trip; what we learned was that driving across the country after an overnight flight was not the best plan. Driving on the “wrong” side of the road with a manual transmission proved to be a challenge with little sleep. This time we will stay in Dublin for the 1st night and drive West with a full night of sleep.

I don’t really use an itinerary builder or app per say, but rather I use a google sheet to manage the trip. There are very fancy apps and even spreadsheets you can buy to track everything but I find google sheets work fine for sharing between Sam and me. The other advantage is being able to share it on our “Garland Family Calendar” for our kids as well. I would love to hear how others organize their itineraries and share them out!

Watch for the next post on what the actual Itinerary turns out to be and why!