Ireland Bound

Today Jennifer and I put the down payment on our trip to Ireland. We have been planning this trip for two years, mainly to save up money to go. We had the trip planned out for over a year, was just waiting to put the down on. Mom is going too. She already gave me her portion of the down payment. All we needed was to get the final figures before paying for the whole trip.

I've been searching the internet for air fare and the cheapest that I could find was $945 each. That's ok, we already knew what the price was for the land portion of the trip. We had a ball park figure of $3500 that included spending.

Today we talked to the travel agent and she found us air fare for $792. We will be flying Delta but don't know if we leave Billings at 6:00 am or 11:30 am. We also got booked for a triple for the motel rooms in Ireland. With the savings that she found on air, we purchased the travel insurance. Now we can stay in our budget without any extras. Today we had to pay for the down and the insurance. If we can pay the balance by March 4th, we will get another $300 savings, that's another $100 each.

We will be leaving on Sept 3 and coming back home on Sept 13. I called Mom tonight and told her the news, she is going to send a check for her portion and we will get this paid off by the end of the month. With the $100 savings we are each going to get, that will give us more money for spending.

I don't have a final itinerary yet, but as soon as we do will make sure you get a copy. That way you can travel with us. Gary will be dropping us off at the airport and he wants us to leave at 6:00 am. This way he won't have to take any time off from work. He can just drop us off. Even if we leave at 11:30, we have to be at the airport 2 hours early anyway, he can just drop us off and we will hang out at the airport for a couple extra hours.

No matter what time we leave Dublin, we are landing in Billings at 11:00 pm on Sunday. Jennifer and I are planning on taking the following Monday off. I remember how she was with jet lag.

The travel agent also informed us that motel rooms in Ireland are not as roomy as they are in the states. She described them being no bigger than a postage stamp.

This is an 11 day trip and we will be staying in Dublin, Kenmare, Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Waterford. We will be seeing sites like Trinity College, Waterford Crystal, Japanese Garden, National Stud Farm, Bunratty Castle, Dingle Peninsula and many many more sites. We will be taking tons of photos.

Now we get the fun part of buying stuff for the trip.