Live from Ireland: T-1 day
Tomorrow the adventure begins! Well…It begins with nearly 12 hours of travel by train, plane and automobile (minus the train part) then the adventure really begins.
We leave for our first B&B this evening – it is a 3 hour drive north to the Rhynes Family B&B where they offer free wi-fi, a comfy queen size bed in my childhood bedroom and a well stocked kitchen for the bargain rate of no euros. This will, I’m certain, be the last time we pay a reasonable rate for anything in the next several days, so we’re thrilled.
In the morning, we’re using the Rhynes B&B shuttle to get us to the airport (it’s complimentary with our stay). From there, a brief flight to Newark gets us ‘halfway’ to Ireland and a long flight across the Pond will get us all the way to Shannon at 7 a.m. local time. When we booked these flights the idea of a hurricane hitting the greater NYC area never occurred to me. We’re quite thankful Irene didn’t turn out to be as big of b*tch as predicted.
We’re armed with several amusing (if not practical or effective) tips on beating jet lag since we plan to begin a full day of adventuring as soon as we arrive. We’ll see how that goes. My main goal is – get this – to eat!!
I’m terrible about not wanting to eat when we are traveling. Traveling as in physically getting from point A to B at the beginning a trip (the rest of the time I follow the ‘there are no calories on vacay’ plan and eat like a horse).
I’m not an uneasy or nervous traveler. I just don’t eat. I get too excited and too distracted and I don’t eat. This inevitably leads to a low-blood-sugar-cranky-pants melt down. The potential for a melt down is already high on the first day – 12 hours of travel, awake for many, many hours, driving on the opposite side of the road, yada yada. I’m hoping that eating will prevent me from behaving like, you know, Hurricane Irene.
Basically traveling with me is like traveling with a 3 year old. Must be kept entertained and well fed. Beware the unavoidable melt down.
So anyway, I’ve got strict plans to consume balanced foods every three hours to maintain my dignity and my marriage. We’ll see how that goes.There are 10-1 odds I’ll still end up crying once, yelling twice and stomping my foot repeatedly before we make it to Ireland. Zac will probably have to force feed me Nutrigrain Bars. But anyway…
As the title of this may have suggested – I will be Live Blogging our entire trip, as long as the wi-fi in rural Irish villages allows. My plan is to write a post each evening. (Lord help us all on the nights that I blog after we’ve visited the pubs.) This will allow us to fill you in on where we’ve been and what we’ve done and share a few pictures of the sites we’ve seen.
I’m not sharing our itinerary in advance for a few reasons, not the least of which is that our itinerary is so detailed it would reveal the full extent of my freakish, type-A personality. Also, I don’t want any blog stalkers following me around Ireland. But I will say we’ve aimed for a balanced trip with equal parts hustle and bustle and relaxing downtime.
We’re also hoping to fit in a few new experiences. While just being in Ireland is enough to make me pee my pants, I think it will be great to do a few things we’ve never done before. And a few things we have…like drinking. We also aimed for a balance in the types of towns we’ll visit. We’ll visit everything from fishing villages to farms to world class cities with populations ranging from 200 to 1.2 million.
Aside from the blogging we plan to remain completely unconnected. No Facebook, no email, no smart phones. So feel free to leave comments via the blog! May the Lord have mercy on you if you leave me a comment that in any way relates to my job. (Either of my jobs for that matter!) If you’re here looking for photo info – there’s plenty of it too be had and you’re welcome to shoot me an email which will promptly be answered after our trip. For now, this girl is on vacation!!
After we return I’ll be recapping the journey in full Maggie-length. You know, like way way more detail than you would ever want to consume. But I’ll liter it with just enough profanity, inappropriate humor and fun photos that you’ll be compelled to read every word. It’s by gift to you. Cus I ain’t bringing home souvenirs.
So here we go, bring on the pints, the sheep, the narrow roads and the fields of green! It’s Ireland time baby : )
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