Ireland Obsession

We jumped on a plane from San Diego to LA the night of Feb. 8.  Pretty uneventful flight.  Once, in LA, on to another plane to Miami.  This was a little more eventful. I sat between Randy and a guy I will call Joe.  Joe did not speak, but he was sure noisy.  Seriously Joe, you need to see my doctors.  Joe made the weirdest sinus noises the entire flight. So annoying.  Not only that, but he apparently thought his long legs could go any where he deemed fit, and that meant under the seat in front of me.  Not only did he take the armrest, but my foot space?  Rude.  Needless to say, neither Randy nor I slept very much at all.  There’s a reason they’re called red eye flights.  

We arrived in Miami about 6:30 in the morning of the 9th, only to enjoy a four and a half hour layover.  That was a ton of fun.  

The trip from Miami to St. Kitts was a little more enjoyable.  The view was incredible! (I’ll post a picture…)  St. Kitts is the larger island to the north of Nevis, which, by the way is pronounced Nee-vis, not Neh-vis like we thought.  It was fun to get another stamp in the passport and I’ve made a command decision - I want to collect these kind of stamps! 

We took a 45 min. boat ride from St. Kitts to Nevis, which included views of a rainbow, a shipwreck and a couple of volcanoes.  The staff of the ferry kept trying to ply us with Rum Punch, but we declined. :)  I think we were the only ones who declined, by the looks of the others!  It’s going to be an interesting couple of days.  

The view of the Four Seasons resort was everything I was hoping for.  It is stunningly beautiful.  The staff was on hand to welcome us, and it’s apparent they know what they’re doing.  It IS the Four Seasons you know.  

A few things you might want to know about Ireland…

1.  Paper is at a premium - a roll of toilet paper is about $1.50 US.  

2.  Some of the toilet paper is like Bounty.  Ouch.

3.  They talk funny :)  You have to really, really listen.

4.  They have different sayings:

a.  Pitch & Putt - Golf Course

b.  Call In - Come In

c.  Scheme -  Plan

d.  Two birds, one stone - Kill two birds with one stone

e.  To Let - Fro Rent

f.  Join Dots - Connect the Dots

g.  Full Fat Milk - (I’ve only had 2% for so long, this one sounded yucky!)

h.  Crisps - Chips

5.  The roads are not wide.  At all.

6.  Don’t plan on averaging over 40 mph on any given trip.

7.  Most of the highways go right through the towns.  This can be quite interesting at times.

8.  There are ruins of old things everywhere you look.

9.  The fish and chips are great wherever you go.  Trust me.  I know.

10.  The Irish are incredibly nice people!

This was one of the nicest vacations I’ve been on.  Yeah, it was cold. But we had a great place to go back to each night.  We didn’t fight any crowds, and we did what we wanted to do.  I promise to let everyone know if I see this incredible deal come through again.  I hope you’ve enjoyed the blog!

-Tammie

ps - I highly recommend vacationing with Pam & Cory.  They are great traveling companions and a ton of fun!

Wednesday, February 3, 2010 - We were up and out early to catch our flight.  It was pouring rain!  We’d made it through our adventure pretty dry, and Ireland was weeping at our departure. lol

We had to fly to Paris, then on to LAX.  Our plane to Paris was not as big as I had hoped, but oh well, we made it safely.  Okay, can I just say that Charles DeGaulle airport in Paris is the biggest airport I have ever seen?  I swear we taxi’d for 20 minutes before we came to a stop.  It was incredible.  When we finally stopped, we had to exit to the tarmac and catch a bus to the terminal.  Once inside the terminal, we had to walk and walk and walk to our next gate.  It was HUGE!  Oh, and you could buy any designer anything you wanted in the terminal.  Hermes, etc.   Pretty wild.  Looked like a darn shopping mall for the incredibly rich! 

I had been planning the whole trip to have a crepe at the airport because I wanted to say that I had a crepe in France.  Well, that was not to be. :(  The only food available at the airport was prepackaged.  Can you believe it?  I couldn’t.  What a bitter disappointment.  Apparently they can make really great clothes, but they can’t figure out how to properly feed people at the airport.

I stood in line at a small food kiosk that was at our gate. (Randy and I, in our attempt to find crepes, had wasted a lot of time and we were some of the last people on the plane.)    Randy looks behind me and says, “Princess Bride, right behind you.”  I turned and sure enough, Princess Buttercup was right behind me!  Resisting the temptation to break out into “My name is Inigo Montoya…” I turned and acted very nonchalant.   She stood behind me in the boarding line and followed me down the ramp and onto the plane.  Of course, she didn’t have the cheap seats like us, so we didn’t see her again, but it was kind of fun to be up close and personal with someone who is in one of your family’s favorite movies.

The ten and a half hour flight home was long, but was passed by watching 5 movies.  :)  I was thrilled they actually had some Bollywood, and Randy got to watch some he’d been wanting to.  Air France rocks on long flights.  

We arrived in LA around 4:00 in the afternoon, went through customs, got our bags and headed home.  We’d been up for about 22 hours by the time we made it home and all were in bed by 7.  

What a great vacation…

-Tammie

Tuesday, February 2, 2010 - Sadly, we bid adieu to our beautiful villa this morning. We were packed and out the door by 8:30.  We had an uneventful trip back to Dublin. Well, that’s not exactly true.  Trying to find our hotel was pretty eventful.  Dublin is a crazy place to drive.  We would never have found the hotel had it not been for the GPS.  We were booked into the Croke Park Hotel, just a few blocks from O’Connell Street.  Croke Park itself is the largest and oldest soccer stadium in Ireland and has quite a fascinating and scary history that involves tanks and killings. Yikes.  The hotel sits directly across the street from the stadium.

After we checked in and dropped our bags in our rooms, we headed to drop the rental car off.  Our flight is early in the morning and we didn’t want to have to leave at 0 dark 30 to return it before the flight.  Dublin mornings are freezing! :)

We took a taxi back to the hotel, lightened our backpacks and decided to walk to downtown.  It had been raining all morning, so we set out with our umbrellas.  Crazy Ireland weather - the sun came out and it started pouring on us.  I know, weird.  It rained for about three blocks and then stopped.  Once we hit O’Connell Street it seemed like everyone in Dublin had decided to take a walk.  The street was full of people.  Evidently they have lunch hour after 2:00.  We eventually made it to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells - a 1000 year old copy of the four Gospels.  So cool. The colors on the pages are amazingly brilliant and it’s incredible to think that it has been around for so long.  A must see if you ever go to Dublin.  Another great thing about Trinity College is that it houses one of the most awesome libraries ever!  The youngest book in the library is over 150 years old.  The ceiling is about 40 feet high with two levels of books on each side with a great hall down the middle.  If I can scan in a postcard, I’ll post it - you are not allowed to take any photos.  Once we were done looking at everything, we set out for food.  A cab driver had recommended O’Donahues so we asked around and got directions.  Once we arrived, we realized it was just a bar - no food.  Bummer.  Across the street was Foley’s  pub so we went there.  The food was good - nothing special, but it filled us.  

Once we were don eating, we were exhausted from all the driving and walking.  We hailed a cab and headed back to the hotel.  By 7:00 we were all asleep!

Memories of the day - a cuban cab driver who took the looonnngg way home, Tammie’s fourth time at fish and chips and walking down Grafton St.

-Tammie