Jetlag

myksandme · Member

Jetlag

Michele Erdvig · Host

Marilyn,

Jet-lag affects people differently. I think the older you are the more difficult it is. It will also depend on if you can sleep on the plane, what you do the first day, whether you get a good night's sleep on your first night in Ireland.

I assume that you arrive on a Sunday and were planning your GC tour for the next day? Perhaps planning it for Tues would be better.

Michele

Andi · Senior Member

As michele says, it's difficult to predict how jet lag will affect you. I travel to Europe from Washington state also, and it's a long haul! Planning to rise before 6:00 on the first full day might be a mistake, if any in your party find the time difference has made it hard to sleep.

Typical advice for those arriving in early morning would be to try to stay awake most of the day, even if you can't do much. Try to avoid a nap, as you might end up sleeping for hours. It's best to try to get on the local time schedule as quickly as possible and plan to go to bed early. But you may appreciate not having to get up early.

For my part, I don't sleep well on planes, and always take sleeping pills for traveling. An eye mask and earplugs also help.

Have a gret trip!

Monty · Senior Member

The one thing I feel you must do -- if you can't sleep on a plane, and perhaps even then -- is to stay moving that first day. Don't travel much at all the first day you land, but stay active that day, doing some walking and sightseeing near where you are going to sleep the first night. If you do that, and have a nice meal the first evening and go to bed early evening Ireland time, most should awake the next day being fairly back to normal.

One thing for certain -- if you get there after the flight and go to bed quickly, you are days away from getting body, mind, and spirit on the same page!

Monty

Zstep · Veteran Member

Travelling from Texas, we arrived in Dublin at 8:30am or so. Our motto was "Power through" the first day. We were absolutely exhausted (after a horrible flight- see my thread on the Trip Reports page- Michelle, I'll be adding to it I promise! Work has been hell since I got back) and we managed to get to Newgrange and Trim Castle the first day before collapsing in a heap about 8-9pm local time. After that we were fine.

wckc · Guru

Our last trip we decided to do Newgrange on our way up to Newtownards. We did farily well at Newgrange, but the long drive after that was bad news - we were both falling asleep! After arriving at our B&B we got cleaned up, went out to dinner and then came back to hit the sack. Our prior trip we dropped our bags and washed up at our B&B and then headed in to Dublin for a full day of sightseeing. we had an early dinner, and called it a night around 7pm.

Both trips we did great after that first arrival day. We're hoping to keep it up this year as well!

tony2phones · Guru

You will have a full day to recover on arrival, but tours up to the Causeway tend to be long laborious days in the respect of time on the bus's. I would go with Michele and leave the long trip until the 3rd rather than 2nd day, provided this fits your schedule. There are lots of shorter tours around the Dublin base to fill the 2nd day.