15 Days in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland

15 Days in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland

Wow. We had a jam-packed couple of weeks with our friends and their family! We have been to Ireland before, but there is always so much more to see. Our past trip was 9 years ago with a focus on Dublin and Dingle as we were there to support our friend Debbie who ran the Dublin Marathon. This time, we were here for a wedding in County Monaghan for our friends Debbie and Steve’s daughter.

This time while here, we decided to expand our travels and knock some things off our bucket lists. In Northern Ireland, I have always wanted to see the Giant’s Causeway. In Ireland, Debbie and I both wanted to see the Cliffs of Moher, and Jim and I wanted to pay a visit to another friend’s son and wife in Kilkenny. Since I am an avid Outlander fan, Scotland peeked my attention. Debbie has some ancestral ties there, so she was excited to explore the country. Jim and Steve wanted to check out St. Andrew’s Golf Course. Some of our grandchildren are very curious about the Loch Ness Monster, so we incorporated a visit there as well.

Flights

We flew in and out of Dublin International Airport on Aer Lingus for our Boston – Dublin roundtrip, and Ryan Air for Dublin to Edinburgh and back. Our flights were all great. We try to fly non-stop whenever possible and the only delay we had was Ryan Air to Edinburgh, delayed by 20 minutes. We used credit card points for some of our flights by transferring points to Aer Lingus. We had enough points to pay for entire flights, but Aer Lingus would only allow so much percent to be paid by points. That was disappointing. Our flight from Boston to Dublin was an overnight flight and we were able to sleep for at least some of it, allowing us to make it through day one without feeling too jet lagged. The flights home made for a long day. We had an early flight from Scotland to Dublin then a long layover for our afternoon flight home. It was costly to fly straight from Edinburgh to Boston, so we opted for the layover and spend some time doing some duty-free shopping at the airport.

We did find Dublin Airport to be very confusing, which is surprising since all signs are in English – however, they do use different words for certain things than we do in America. We ended up missing customs when we followed a sign for “connecting flights”. We thought we were on a connecting flight because we were going to another flight, but this is for those whose luggage is moved from flight to flight by the airline. We had to drag our (very large) bags halfway back across the airport to go through customs (US customs happens in Dublin, not Boston). We also got very confused with signage of where to return our rental van. After circling the airport 3 times and calling the company, we still couldn’t locate where to drop off. I ended up having to run into airport to ask for assistance from the rental counter (turns out they weren’t very helpful either which is a story for another day). Bottom line, leave extra time to make sure you can navigate the airport and car rental returns.

Logistics

There were 12 of us from the wedding on the flight from Boston and Debbie hired two drivers to pick us up at the airport in vans and bring us and our enormous bags to our hotel in Dublin. The next day we were fortunate that the groom arranged a driver from McLaughlin’s Transportation to stay with us for the next few days to go from our Dublin hotel to Belfast, Northern Ireland and to all the sites there. Two late comers joined us the morning we left for Belfast. Brendon was our driver, and he was wonderful. He brought us to the Titanic Museum on the first day and the next day to Bushmill’s Distillery, Giant’s Causeway and Carick-a-rede Rope Bridge. On day 3, he left with the immediate family members to get them to Castle Leslie for the wedding rehearsal while Jim rented a van for the 6 of us to get to the castle the next day for the welcome dinner. We kept the van for 8 of us to tool around until we drove to the airport to depart for Scotland 6 days later. We did have some concerns with the van, such as parking in the cities. We were able to find either overnight street or lot parking everywhere we went without much trouble and without costing a fortune. Jim is a retired firefighter, so he has no fear of driving larger vehicles under stress, so it made him the perfect choice to chauffer us. None of the rest of us had any interest in taking on that task.

Weather

As with any trip, we watched the weather on the Weather Channel app for weeks prior to the trip. Two weeks prior, the app showed typical Ireland weather – on and off rain for most of the time. We packed accordingly, However, as the trip got closer, it showed only sunshine all 15 days. We repacked but made sure that we brought raincoats just in case. Turns out that 14 of the 15 days were dry and sunny, 50’s-70. Some of us event got slightly sunburned – who thought about sunscreen in Ireland in the Spring? One day in Scotland was a little drizzly and that was the long tour day to Loch Ness and the Highlands. We missed most of the drizzle as it was mainly contained to Edinburgh. Everywhere we went, locals would say how lucky we were to have such unusually fantastic weather. Our trip nine years ago was for ten days during October-November and we had the same luck! Not a drop of rain that time either!

Packing

Jim and I are notorious for only packing carry-ons for our trips. Because this trip was 15 days with a wedding in the middle, we fell into that trap of over-packing. We felt that we were traveling with a group, and they were all checking bags, so we were going to have to go to baggage claim anyway, we may as well check bags. This led to packing extra clothes that we usually do without. We have sworn that off now and will try to avoid doing this again at all costs. I had a large suitcase. Jim had a medium sized suitcase. I used my Foldy travel bag as my carry-on and kept an unused backpack in there that Jim used as a carry-on for souvenirs on the way home. Too much! We had to also fit all these bags into the van which was tight. We opted for a 9-seater van rather than 8 as we had 8 people and bags to cart around.  Luckily there was plenty of baggage room.

Food

When traveling with a group for 15 days internationally, thoughts on food can be pretty varied. For us, we like to try all of the staples for that part of the world – eat like a local. The problem with that for 15 days, is there isn’t a lot of variety in the Irish/Scottish palette. We had our share of shepherd’s pie, cottage pie, fish n chips, haggis and lamb which were all delicious, however, we felt the need to vary it a bit. We also tried Asian fusion, Italian and pizza to change it up a bit. At first I was resistant, but I soon came around realizing that variety is truly the spice of life.