Melissa,

Your weird questions always give me a good laugh! Mary Browne at Bunratty Lodge definitely has a nice Irish accent (she speaks Irish Gaelic fluently too!). Margaret Liston at Glenelg has an Irish accent. Joe and Vera Reilly at Beechwood have Irish accents. Joe used to be a taxi driver in Dublin and is full of fun and info. If you email Beechwood try this address instead of the address on their website: info@beechwood.ie You will have better success with it.

I assume from your comments that you have ditched Dublin and are spending more time in NI instead?

I sense another trip to Ireland in the making.

Michele

 

Melissa,

I just realized it should be O'Reilly instead of Reilly!

Michele

irisheyes, don't be anxious on account of me, I have been called the most over-prepared traveller on the planet, and have also been accused of having the most-researched trip in history for Ireland!!!

It's easy to get anxious about travel-planning. I love travel planning, and the thing to do about the anxiety is try to brush it aside and focus on the fun your family will be having together, and the learning experiences for your kids.

What are the ages of your kids? I have travelled with mine for years and can relate for sure to the issues arrising! We flew to New Zealand from San Diego (with cheap airline passes because of where I worked in those days) with a 2-year-old! Whew, talk about a long flight! He did fine but ran about in circles as soon as they let us off the plane. I just let him...it was a small room with a carpet and there wasn't any way for him to get hurt. He was surrounded by weary passengers just sitting and watching him. Can you picture it?

If your kids are old enough to read, write, color, etc, you have it made as it is much easier to entertain them on the plane. I think they will sleep a bit as long as you don't allow them to have any caffeine. When the drink cart comes around tell them ahead of time they have to have fruit juice, or 7-up...you might have to check out the labels in the grocery store and know in advance which drinks have no caffeine.

For kids ages 2 through 8, you can wrap small inexpensive toys and tell them when they are good (you must define "good" on a plane!) they will receive a surprise. I used them for difficult times like for a 2-year-old when the meals come, everyone has their trays down, so he must sit still and can't walk about. So when he behaves through the meal he gets to open a wrapped gift. (I got this idea from watching a Dad who travelled alone with his small son, and he brought an entire back-pack full of wrapped inexpensive toys, and his son behaved perfectly, I think they had done this before!

If you prevent your child from kicking the seat of the person in front of you, you may get a nice person who helps you to entertain the children. A couple of passengers were charmed with my 2-year-old and helped out!

The wrapped gifts and knowing what was expected of them helped with the kids ages 2 through 8. After age 8, if they don't know how to behave...yikes, parents are in big trouble, they should know by then! They will be perfect angels. Just kidding! They will still be ordinary kids, but if you have practiced all that logical-consequences discipline by age 8, your kids will be quite tolerable around other grown-ups and won't get in trouble in school...And will be manageable on the airplane.

Hey, Irisheyes, forgive me for getting carried away, I just miss having those little ones to teach, mine are now young adults, my baby is 18!

Oh yeah, and for 2 to 4 year olds, a big bag of candy is great on the plane. I didn't normally allow them too much sugar, but for the plane, I bought a big bag of those safety-handle suckers, and that kept my 2-year-old, who normally didn't receive much candy, happy and quiet for a while!

Practical issues, I bought the tickets through my favorite AAA travel agent, becase San Diego to Europe is such a long flight, I wanted the benefit of her expertise. Because it's so important to me to book good seats in advance, and we have 4 (or sometimes 5) people to seat, I don't go for last-minute deals. I buy in advance. So I paid $975 per ticket for flying from LAX to Dublin and then on to Shannon...the return flight is Dublin to LAX. We live in San Diego so I still have to figure out what to do about that. (It is now too expensive to fly San Diego to Los Angeles! WE will either drive and leave our car at a hotel, which my AAA travel agent says there are several that will do that for you for a reasonable fee.. .Or the other option is doing a super shuttle but that actually costs more... However I don't want my hubby driving home after the long international flight so I have to figure that part out too. Anyway $975 probably isn't a super bargain or anything, but it's a reasonable price from LAX to Dublin/Shannon round trip...

As to booking your b&bs, as I mentioned I have booked 3, and they had availability at this point. In fact I had a choice of rooms. I like booking when I get my choice of rooms...so I try to book early.

When you book early you ask for the cancellation policy. Don't forget if something goes wrong you have time to cancel usually. I don't usually need to cancel because I have already done so much research, but you never know. (Once the airline cancelled one of our flights for Costa Rica for example and so I had to rearrange hotels a bit.)

As to stopping in Boston, will that make it easier on the kids? Well, it depends on their age. If they are so young that they aren't able to behave standing in the long lines at airports for security checks etc., then you will have double the lines by stopping in Boston. Oh yes, for very young kids, you should be sure to walk them up and down the aisles, take them by the hand...they sit better if you take them for a few walks. Older kids can take their own walks.

Once your kids are around 10, they are old enough to ask for their opinions. On driving trips my older kids voted on how many stops we should make...they often just wanted to get there, they told us to push on...I was the one who wanted to stop!!!

You can sleep a bit on the plane, if you avoid caffeine too! Unless you have a 2-year-old, then you won't sleep unless he does...

Bring some small travel pillows for the kids to sleep...Try to get a row with a window seat and an aisle seet, kids seem to like the window.

Well good luck, relax, it's going to be fun! With kids I think you should plan a nice slow Ireland trip, they like to stop when they see something as exciting as a dog or a horse...I would spend more days in fewer places with kids and try not to drive more than half a day at a time.

Thanks for listening! I hope I helped. I think it's fantastic that your kids will get to travel to Ireland. What great family memories you will be making together. The older kids can also learn a lot by learning how to read a map, and help you navigate for example...they love that sort of thing.

irisheyes, you might want to start another post so as to get advice from some folks who have already been to Ireland. But I sure enjoy chatting with you here as well!

Yes, those airfare prices are scary. Ask Michelle if you can get a cheaper price by waiting til closer to your trip. Personally, for flying to Europe, becasue I am a nervous flyer, I would rather know in advance I have my favorite seats and tickets all set. Relaxes me.

But for Costa Rica, which was a shorter flight for us, I waited for a good price for June...I checked the airfare on several web-sites several times each day, and noticed it sometimes goes down temporarily at weird times like midnight, so if you are up late, and see a good price, snatch it up, because the prices will be higher again by morning! Anyway be sure to ask experienced Ireland travellers about this. I am just telling you this worked for me for Costa Rica tickets. We flew for a little over $400 each round trip San Diego to Costa Rica.

But when buying airfare on-line be sure to notice the total travel time...with kids, you don't want to be stuck with a flight which is very very longer than necessary! Notice the total travel time, which the site will give you.

10 and 13 are great travel ages! You are all set! The more they understand, the better. Make sure they understand how long the flight is, and that they will need to entertain themselves for that long...They are old enough to ask about the choice of stopping in Boston, and explain to them the pros and cons of each choice. (Stopping in Boston meaning an added day of hassling with standing in airport lines but getting to get off overnight and stretch your legs...)

Michelle is great about helping you figure out how far it is wise to drive in one day.

Show your kids some photos and give them some choices. Oh, I gotta go! So fun chatting about Ireland trip planning. Good luck.

Irisheyes: by the way all your potential stops sound good to me...Dublin, Killkenny, Killarney, Dingle, and Kenmare...good luck deciding. For our first trip to Ireland next summer I considered all of those except for Kilkenny, which just isn't enroute for us.

After considering the entire southwest I chose Dingle as our southwest stop. Hope to spend more time in southwest Ireland on future visits. We're focusing on southwest, west, and Northern Ireland on this trip.

Have fun!