This past week was meant to be full of Lonely Planet guides, Ireland blog posts and tons of planning. Let’s just say the Dublin Lonely Planet which my boss loaned me is still sitting unopened on my night stand. On top of that sits the Ireland guidebook that Lorenzo’s sister bought us for Christmas. Tonight will be full of take-away pizza and Ireland information.
I have already received tons of help from others who have traveled to or lived in Ireland, including Caz (of yTravelBlog) who lived in Dublin for a while and actually worked in the bar (now part hostel) where we are staying in Temple Bar! She took the time to give me all of her best recommendations. I’m thankful for the local insights! An old co-worker of mine dated a Dubliner for a few years while she was living in Florence and she was more than happy to extend a nice facebook message full of tips and suggestions as well! The fact that it is nearing that ‘Irish’ holiday, St. Patrick’s Day means that I’m also intercepting loads of tweets about the best of Ireland.
This trip is a big one for us. We originally planned on doing it last year, but when I was hired to teach English mid-February I was told that I could not go on any trips since I was supposed to start working at any time. I therefore postponed the long-planned trip to Ireland as well as trip to France to visit one of my best friends. The job didn’t start until mid-April but that’s another story. More importantly, on March 17th we’ll be celebrating something else!
We depart on Saturday. We’ll be spending some time in Galway first and then heading to Dublin to celebrate St. Paddy’s. Also in Dublin, we will get our first taste of couchsurfing. I’m very excited to see how my first couch surf goes and think that we’ve chosen a good place to stay! I’ll keep you all posted on how that goes.
This trip was also meant to be the first one that we would actually create a budget for and stick to it. Problem is that I’m in need of a major break and don’t think that I can handle the stress that comes with constantly thinking about money. I’ve figured an overall budget that should allow us a couple of (anticipated to be expensive) Irish meals and some Guinness.
In other news, Lorenzo and I are still working on putting together the details for that BIG ANNOUNCEMENT I mentioned a few weeks ago. If you have been following me around the interwebs, chances are you have a general idea what is coming but I’ll reveal the details as we start to cement them.
