Ireland

September 2024

We had a difficult time deciding on a destination for our family trip this year. Both kids had commitments over the summer. M was game to go just about anywhere. C wasn’t sure she wanted to go anywhere with the family, but Ireland seemed to be the most appealing to her. The fact that both the kids and I had recently received Irish passports as well as seeing where their great grand parents had come from were also factors that weighed in favor of visiting Ireland.

We settled on the two weeks in September before the kids fall quarter of college began. We like to stay in places that allow us to cook and spread out more than is possible with hotel rooms. Most of our family likes to spend more than one night at a place and C also expressed a strong preference for not moving around a lot. After considering several options we decided to focus on four areas before returning to spend a night in the vicinity of the airport. Our friends who live in the southwest of England were also interested in a short meetup and Belfast was significantly less expensive than Dublin for a house that we all could stay in. We therefore, settled on four locations with a two night stay at an alpaca farm that was an hour from the Dublin airport. We settled on Dublin (3 nights), Belfast (2 nights), Enniskillen (4 nights), Galway (3 nights), Wicklow (2 nights). Keep reading to see a little more about what we did in each location. The entries are in displayed in reverse chronological order so the most recent entries appear first. To read this in the same order that we did the trip, scroll to the end and read the last entries first.

Flights

We found direct flights to Dublin from Seattle on Aer Lingus and were able to book the flights by transferring points from our Chase credit card to Avios points. We still had to pay for taxes and for some reason Aer Lingus is similar to British Airways in having much higher taxes than other airlines. We used 32,750 miles and $314.70 per ticket. Aer Lingus charges extra for just about everything including charging more for seats that are closer to the front of the plane. We opted to not pay extra and ended up sitting at the rear of the plane. Aer Lingus did provide gluten free meals although that option was difficult to find on their website and the meal service on the way to Dublin was pretty haphazard, with them running out of dinner and not remembering the gluten free breakfast (which was a ham and cheese sandwich) until shortly before landing.

Car Rental

We rented a standard size automatic from Budget car rental at Dublin airport. We picked it up at the end of our Dublin stay and returned it the day we departed Dublin. We had the car for 11 days. Internet travel forums are full of warnings about Ireland rental car surcharges and the requirement for full insurance coverage. While liability coverage is required, we declined collision insurance and relied on coverage provided by our credit card. I had a letter from the card issuer that I was able to print out prior to our leaving that was evidence that the coverage covered Ireland. The person at the Budget rental counter happily accepted this and seemed grateful that I had it ready when we got to that part of the rental process. Budget does charge 25€ as an administrative fee for declining collision insurance and will put a 5,000€ hold on your credit card. It also charges 35€ to cover travel in Northern Ireland and applies an outrageous amount for a full tank of petrol. There was no issue having the 5,000€ hold and prepaid petrol charge removed when we returned the vehicle undamaged and with a full tank of petrol. I found the car rental process very similar to the United States and would not hesitate to rent from Budget again. I found the rate through Autoslash.com that found the rate at priceline.com. We paid $545.15 for the 11 day rental.

Budget

We didn’t really have a budget for the two week trip. We pretty much did what we wanted, but we did try to be save where it made sense. For example, we found discounts for the hop on hop off bus and used car parks that were a bit further away from the official and expensive parking lots at the Giants Causeway and Cliffs of Moher. All our expenses, including airfare, for the 15 day trip for the four of us averaged out to about $165 a day per person.

Ireland

Flights

Car Rental

Budget

Wicklow – K2 Alpaca Farm

Galway, Cong, Cliffs of Moher

Enniskillen

Belfast

Dublin