Ireland Honeymoon: A Very Long Day 1 Continues

Because we took the red eye to Dublin, the first day of our Honeymoon was actually over 24 hours long. Couple Travel Tip: When the plane landed, the best thing we did was just reset our clocks to Ireland time and not even think about what time it was at home. That meant it was 6 am and we had the whole day to play in Dublin...but first, we had to get our rental car...

Let me preface this next part with how excited we were about the rental car situation when we were originally planning. As soon as we booked the airplane tickets, it took us right to a rental car site and would only cost us 35 Euros a day, so we booked it right away [Scott: Let's start by saying that what looks too good to be true, is just that. I was worried about the company's legitimacy, but we did research and it definitely checked-out, or so we thought...] . From previous family experience, [Scott: My dad, in short, took on a Swiss street train with a rental mini-van and he is proud to say that "at least we broke the train as well." No one was hurt, but the van looked like an opened sardine can. So, the lesson was ALWAYS get insurance in a foreign country.] we knew we needed to purchase insurance and assumed it would be equivalent to US car insurance on a rental (this is where we FAILED). When we finished all the paperwork with the rental car place it ended up costing us 2x what we were anticipating, so Couple Travel Tip #2: if you are planning on renting a car in Ireland...our advice is to call the rental car place and get the quotes directly from them; NOT from the online booking [Scott: If we had not over budgeted in general for this trip, this unforeseen cost would have brought on a very stressful start and probably would have come up again throughout the trip in the form of those fun little fights that ruin a day quickly.]

We took a shuttle to the car pick-up and, thanks to my wonderful husband (who knows how to drive a manual), I got to enjoy the navigator's seat the entire trip! [Scott: "Knows how to not kill himself in a manual" is not the same as "knows how to drive a manual."] The first experience, however, from the navigator's seat was not that fun though. I have never ridden in a car on the left side as a passenger; nor have I ever ridden in a car driving on the left hand side...on tiny roads. Even though the drive from the rental car company to our hotel was only about 15 minutes, Scott and I learned a lot about husband/wife tone; driving tone, navigating tone, "shit, you're on the wrong side on the road" tone, and "I think we're in the right place, but the hotel did not really have an address" tone. [Scott: She forgot my favorite - "You're stressing me out more than a stick shift, on the left hand side of the road, in a foreign country, with no meaningful lines on the road" tone.] Side note on Irish addresses and Couple Travel Tip #3 of this post: it does not seem to be required to assign street numbers, which makes plugging something into a GPS kind of hit or miss so be nice to your navigator.

Since we came into Dublin on St. Patty's Day weekend, we could not find a hotel anywhere near the city center for less than an arm and a leg, so we had to find something close to a train station (thanks again to Scott's experience living in Germany). We found good reviews for and ended up staying at the Marine Hotel at Sutton Cross. If you want some place nice and relaxing, right on the harbor, with simple and clean rooms, and an easy train ride into town, this was a great option! Our priorities at this point were to get to the train station to get downtown and find breakfast. Though it was too early to check-in at the hotel, we were able to leave our car in the parking lot. From the hotel it was an easy walk to the Sutton Station (once we walked the correct way), and even though it cost 10 Euros for a round-trip pass, there was no way we were driving into Dublin that first day. [Scott: I had already lost enough years of my life just getting to the hotel.]

Now comes the FUN PART...Temple Bar!

 Sutton Station was an easy walk from where we staying at the Marine Hotel in Sutton Cross. We were some of the only people on the train heading into Dublin that morning.

Practicing our Gaelic on day 1. It was a good thing that everything else was in English. 

Planning Our Honeymoon - So Many Options

As I am new to blogging, I am going to attempt to reflect on our Honeymoon as I remember it and not as it was actually happening. The long story short is that we had a great time and came back still very much married, but I give kudos to the both of us for some major compromising and our overall "wing it" attitude.

Pre-Honeymoon:
We got married in October 2012...right in the middle of a huge move across country [Scott: And right in the middle of Hurricane or "Super Storm" or whatever Sandy!] with the company at which we both work. Our work is involved with elementary schools, and since October puts school in full swing, we decided to wait until Spring Break time for our Honeymoon (not to mention that a move + a Honeymoon + adjusting to the atmosphere for work would have been super stressful). Our thing was that you can do a Honeymoon at any time, so why not enjoy it fully - meaning the planning, the actual Honeymoon, and then not dreading coming home.

We love to travel, so we knew our Honeymoon would be a big trip (at least 2 weeks) and we actually started saving money for it specifically. That was the best move we made. We have a vacation fund in our savings account that we allot over 11% of our salary toward and the Honeymoon budget just became a part of that fund. This allowed us to take the "money stress" largely out of the equation and allowed us to be flexible not only with lodging, but with activities, food, souvenirs, [Scott: Irish beer], etc. I will get to this later, but we intentionally put aside more money than our trip budget - this meant no stress even if last minute expenses caught us off guard (i.e. renting a car in Ireland and their REALLY fine, fine print).

Scott studied abroad in Germany and has traveled to a lot of places in Europe, something that I had not had the opportunity to do yet, so we decided Europe was our Honeymoon destination. Plus the fact that we SCUBA dive and do the warm weather/beach thing over the summer anyway. [Scott adds that we also needed a change in weather apparently.] Scott felt since this was my first experience overseas, an English speaking country would be best and, originally, we discussed going to Ireland, England, and Scotland all in one go. Once we had the plan in mind and started reading up and researching places to visit though, we came to the conclusion that 2 weeks was just not enough time to experience all three places. Our vacation time with work was limited, so since 2 weeks was all we had and Scott had never been to Ireland either, Ireland it was!

 Couple Travel Tip: Budget for your trip and then save a little more so you are not caught off guard by unplanned expenses (like rental cars).