Walt,

As the administrator of the forum I see things diferently than others do when logged in. I have configured the forum in my panel for members to be able to delete posts for 24 hours after posting. But lately Activeboard has been messing with settings and adding new bells and whistles. I will have to see if my settings have been changed by them.

Your itinerary is doable but with lots of one-night stays. They tend to get tiresome after a while. I can see places where you could have combined stays for more two nighters but your itinerary is already set in stone. So go with it. Next trip you can come here first for help.

I like your first city "Atlantic Ocean" and miles "lots"! LOL!

Michele

Walt,

I'm sure you and your wife will have a great time. You seem to have a good attitude about the whole trip. I don't know about petting sheep. If you can catch one they are generally rather grungy. Maybe at a petting farm?

I saw that old movie too. If It's Tuesday, This Must be Belgium!

Michele

Michele, Tony, thanks for the comments. We won't be "loading up" at the pubs and probably will only hit a half dozen or so the whole trip. But even if we do more it will be a "glass of beer" not a pint.

Mary, my wife, was born and raised on a farm in Michigan. It had an outhouse until she was about six and she went to a one room schoolhouse until she was 14 when her dad died and they moved off the farm. She does more handy work around the house than I do these days.

Walt

PS: Here's our wedding picture!  We'll a few years later, about 45 years later.



-- Edited by Rusty Stumps on Monday 9th of August 2010 05:45:51 PM

Michele, I thought we might look like an Irish couple. [grin] Thanks.

We're in the "count down" phase now. Everything is set, paid for, planned, etc. Just waiting to head to the airport when the day arrives.

I have a friend in Kilkenny that we will be meeting up with. He does road engineering in Ireland. That should be a fun night. He's working up in Ennis but will had back Thusday when we are there for the evening. Trying to talk us into a four course meal at a fancy restaurant. Not our thing. We tend to eat light, I know the picture shows that, but we generally split meals to cut down.

Walt

Michele,

Well, the food could or could not be an issue. First, we both need to loose some. Second, we always have a light breakfast of toast and tea. I think that will change and we'll do a light lunch. Blood (Black) pudding is out of the question for both of us. Neither one of us is much of an adventurer with food. May be lots of Fish & Chips for me. Not sure what Mary will eat but I'm absolutely sure it won't be mutton or lamb. [grin]

We will have a blast no matter what comes our way. We tend to roll with the punches as the saying goes. We've done cruises and not taken the canned tours. Traveled the back roads of Burmuda and told we should have stayed out of those areas but we had fun. Walked the Market in SF at 2 in the morning only to find out "you shouldn't do that" but we had fun. We'll stay out of the back roads of Dublin though.

We're all set to drop our car at the Fitzpatrick and take the DART to Connolly Station. From there it's a short walk up Talbot St to the "Hop on/Hop Off" bus ticket office. We'll most likely take the yellow line or at least after the Guinness Storehouse as it heads back toward Talbot St. rather than running out the Phoenix Park. Drops at St. Stephens Green, Temple Bar, St. Patrick's and the Storehouse are in store.

Only question is, do we eat at Temple Bar or wait and eat at the Storehouse?

Walt

Walt,

I like Tony's suggestion. But I suggest you eat when you get hungry wherever you happen to be. And if you are at all interested in Irish history you must see Kilmainham Gaol. It is haunting.

Michele

Hi Walt:

Sounds like another possible reason not to mess with vouchers, as many of us here go out of our way not to use them.  Of course, you might have gotten a rate that was too good to pass on!

No matter, you sound prepared and will no doubt get things sorted out for a wonderful trip. 

Monty

Michele, I've had it happen twice.

First was a flight to Las Vegas on Delta with tickets bought and paid for two months in advance. Show up at the ticket counter and told "You didn't verify your tickets so they were canceled!" Excuse me, I paid for them what else did you need. They scrambled and got us on a flight to LA and back to Vegas where we arrived ahead of our original flight.

Second was this past spring on a trip to Florida. I made reservations for Easter weekend but realized I had other commitments. I wrote and asked to change to two weeks before. "No problem, all taken care of." Arrive on the perscribed date to find we didn't have a room and seeing we had animals (the room was for animals) they couldn't accomidate us. I showed them the confirmation email where apon the husband and wife had a real go at it. [smirk] Seems she deleted his entry. Anyway, they paid to put us up at a Holiday Inn Express for one night and then gave us a regular room for the rest of the trip. Our cats aren't an issue so there was no problem.

I've been in contact with the first five B&B's on the list and the first four were canceled. I've also been in touch with the tour company and they are scrambling to get things corrected.

I also called and verified our airline tickets today as only my name appeared on both emails of confirmation. Everything was OK there and the person read back all info to me.

Yep, when going far double check in advance. I didn't want to sleep in St. Stephen's Green for four nights. I figured the benches weren't made for two and might be crowded anyway. [smirk]

Walt


-- Edited by Rusty Stumps on Monday 16th of August 2010 03:46:04 PM

Michele,

Weelll, I'm still working on this. I sent out six emails to B&B's and all came back with "Reservations canceled." I then proceeded to contact the trip insurance company and I've gone round with them. One says "no" the second says "should be." I'm waiting for them to get back to me.

In the meantime I've contacted Explore Ireland and have received a new set of vouchers. I am in the process of contacting a few hotels and B&B's to see if the reservations are now set. One of the hotels, The Raddison St. Helen didn't answer my question so I had to re-question them as to a valid reservation.

I also had sent an email to Abbey Tours and they contacted me. They acted as if they had no idea what I was talking about and wanted a list of my B&B's. Well they were the ones who cancled the first set of reservations so I responded with a question on "why can't you find me in your system if you have cancled my reservations?" The B&B's that responded said Abbey was the one who made and canceled the reservations.

I'm not in a position to alter anything as this is all paid for so now it's down to making sure someone isn't playing games. I may call Abbey tomorrow as I have a direct phone number.

Anyway, we are going no matter what. It would take me time to get my money back from the insurance company and all so I'm not getting worked up over that, yet that is.

On another note: My wife was doing searches on Explore Ireland and came across a fellow's comments on his tour. He had nothing bad to say about E-I but he lambasted Dooley Car Rental telling everyone to stay away from them as they were a ripoff. Everyone has different views of everything I guess.

Walt

Things are looking good on our trip. I received emails back from four of the hotel/B&B's and our reservations have been confirmed. So, I guess it was just one person screwing up and it's been corrected.

They couldn't book us at the Fitzgerald as they were full up for Sept. 1st so we are staying at the Raddison Blu St. Helen instead. I was sort of looking forward to the long DART ride into downtown Dublin. Now we'll be taking a bus I guess.

Only goes to prove, you must check your reservations and not take anyone's word for it. I wasn't looking forward to sleeping on park benches or in the car anyway!

Now it's time to start getting everything together as it's only a week and a half before we fly out to Ireland.

Walt

-- Edited by Rusty Stumps on Friday 20th of August 2010 08:24:03 AM

Well, we're all packed and just about ready to hit the road, no air, to Ireland.

One thing we are taking is a small notebook that will be used as a abbreviated diary. One right hand page for each day. Places we stop at or special photos taken will be noted with a very brief word or two including time. The camera records date and time so it will be easy to match up photos with exactly where we were when the photo was taken.

With four 16 GB flash memory cards I'll be able to take gobs of photos. Trouble is remembering exact what it was that the photo was taken of. The note book will help.

Also I've been asked to give a talk at our monthly K of C social meeting in October about our trip. And, I've kidded people with the idea that I will be selling CD's of the photos of our trip in order to re-coup some of the costs.

Walt

Michele,

You're right on all counts. yes, I intend on keeping the talk to a minimum as a number of others have been over. Fact it was talking with one that we made the final decision to do the trip. I'll have a long question period and WE ALWAYS serve Guinness along with a few other beers. [grin]

I'll limit the photos to about two dozen or so depending on how good they come out. All the photos on my website are mine and done with my Canon A20.

With digital cameras I found it's best to TURN OFF the flash and let the camera adjust the light intake. You don't get a hot spot that way. Also, you will need to do some adjustment on brightness, sharpness and a bit on color in a program like PhotoShop.

Walt

Welcome home, a chara,

I look forward to hearing all about your adventure.  It always seems to take me about a week to get the Irish out. Okay, the Irish is never worn out of me...let's just say settle the Irish in me. Jet lag is a sticky thing to shaky sometimes.

Slan beo,

Bit