Caseyhen, how exciting, we loved Westport and Dingle! Good idea to try to stay walking distance to town if you like pubs...it was much more relaxing that way. But make sure walking distance is also safe...you want a sidewalk or enough shoulder on the road to walk...We saw pedestrians sometimes walking in completely unsafe spots, on narrow roads with cars whipping by, no shoulder, and sometimes even on a curve! That's a very dangerous place to walk!

As to contacting b&bs, sometimes they are on vacation we found or on an out-of-town visit! Try to get their phone numbers if it's a small family-run place...the only trouble with phone calls is, it can get expensive if they start chatting in that friendly Irish way. Perhaps if you gave your DH's relatives the phone numbers of the places you are trying to contact, they could try to call by phone, and maybe get the b&b hosts to e-mail you?

Also, I have had trouble with hotels and b&bs in Europe not being able to reach my old e-mail account, which was on roadrunner and was through Outlook Express. I now have them always contact me through a yahoo e-mail account and they never have any trouble. Try a different e-mail account.

Sometimes the server in Ireland can be down for a week also...that happened once to us...and that is why you can't reach them.

Good luck! Gotta love Ireland! Where are you staying in Westport and Dingle? Westport is great, Matt Malloys Pub has great traditional music, it's different every night (when we were there in July), and we loved the fun uncrowded shopping. Such a charming town, just the right size. If you are tired of Irish food by then and tired of potatoes have some good Italian at Torrino's. (in my trip report on trip report page.)

-- Edited by Melissa5 at 14:40, 2006-08-03