It all started when my friend from college decided to make a life change & move to Arizona from Ohio. I offered to let her move into the spare room of my house for a few months until she could find a place of her own. I hadn't seen Tracy in over 10+ years when I extended this offer. Well it turned out to be a life changer for me too. You see when she got here we started to catch up and one night as we were talking about my mom (who by the way loved all things Irish) Tracy happened to mention how she and a friend of her from OH we're wanting to plan a trip to Ireland this year. Naturally I invited myself Long!
Well as it turns out, Tracy's friend picked up a new job & can't afford to take the time off to go anymore. Now the trip had become Tracy & I alone. Not that I don't want to travel alone with my friend, but how much fun would it be if some of our other friends could come along as well. Thus the recruitment began.
First I mention the trip to my bestie, Roxy. I explain to her that I will be planning the trip & that I would love to have her along too...I mean how could I possibly begin to plan an international road trip with my best road tripping friend! ((I may have also mentioned to her that I was going to take some of my mom's ashes so she could eternally play in the land she always dreamed of)). So fruits of that labor equal exactly 2 mushy "maybe" responses...maybe yes for the whole trip and maybe yes for just 1 week of the 2 week adventure.
Next I mention the trip to Bettina and Joe. I've also known them for several years now and they too know how I have always wanted to travel to the land of the great Guinness makers! Well they were totes excited for me and hoped I had a good time but they didn't think they could make it either...but they would think about it. Thats all I had to hear, it's like from the movie Dumb & Dumber....they were saying I had a chance! Every time I saw them I was talking about the trip in one way or another. Lucky for me, one night I needed to have my kitchen faucet replaced (that's a whole different story, lets just say ugh, plumbing in my house is a nightmare). I asked Joe to come help me as he is 1. A good handyman & 2. A good guy that I knew would help a girl out. As it turns out, Bettina agreed to come ov with him to help me do some research for the trip online so she can see if it is realistic for them to consider joining in.
As luck would have it once agin, Bettina happened to mention that it might be better to look into "self catered" rental homes since we were to be going for 2 weeks. I was manning my computer, Bettina her iPad & Joe my kitchen faucet. Bettina & I found several maybe options but nothing that made us move the trip from a pipe dream to reality. Nothing that is until we googled thatched roof cottages. We figured if we were going to doa this, we might as well do it right. Well we found a cute little place that was love upon first site. It is called Barley Cove Thatched Cottage.
Is little cottage had Bettina & I giddy with excitement! Here is why:
1. It is cute as hell
2. It was available for the week we wanted to go (nearly all the others were not)
3. It is in the perfect location to serve as a base for day tripping around western and southern Ireland
4. It is big enough for all 4 people + more if Roxy & her husband find a way to swing the trip
5. it is only €595 for the entire week!
Holy shit this was like the Holy grail of places to stay. Bettina agrees to call them the next morning to check to see if we can book it. What happened was that we ended up finding an emails address for the proprietor on the cottage website. We email her & presto this shit just got real, we have booked a rental cottage for the second week of our trip! A wonderfully nice woman named Fidelma McNamera let us know that she lives next door & that she will be providing us with eggs fresh from their hens each morning & that we will also get to meet their mules, Stella & Toby. Oh my god that email made e whole thing even better!
Bettina confided in me that before finding the cottage, she & Joe had agreed that they would gracefully back out that night when they came over to fix my faucet, but that cottage totes changed their minds. Now in case you're wondering what happened to Tracy in all this...well she works nights when the planning unexpectedly jumped into high gear. She was by the way totes onboard with our plans anyway. Turns out, she actually prefers that Bettina & I take the reigns for the planning. Ok..really I'm totes all over that.
Well now let's recap, the trip that did not include me added me, then became me & Tracy, now has become me, Tracy, Bettina & Joe with a chance of a Roxy & Kevin siting somewhere along the lines. Awesom!!
Anyway, we have a friggen cottage booked for a week but no flight there yet. Talk about putting the cart enforce the horse. Anyway, we decided we best get on the ball as July is peak travel season in Ireland and most likely flights prices were going to do nothing but go up. Bettina is my online travel stalker. I think she probably checks flight prices frequently so she can daydream about faraway places. Thanks to that obsession she found us a killer deal compared to some of the prices we had found earlier. Now understand this, Bettina is quite literally a dedicated and loved high school teacher, I am quite literally like the dad from the Incredibles...a boring claims adjuster. S one day we are both diligently slaving away at our respective jobs when I receive a text from Bettina telling me about the killer flight info. The catch is that the travel site she found will not allow us to use multiple credit cards as we were hoping (ie. each of us provides our own). As a result we made an executive decision that Bettina would book 2 flights, 1 for her & the other for Joe and I would book the oth two, 1 for me and one for Tracy. We were paranoid that if we didn't book immediately that we would lose the rates since they have been changing hourly...what is one to do in this kind of situation. Bet your sweet ass you're right, we both decide to boom right then & there without checking with our two other traevel friends. Bettina is trying to book it before her students arrive (which was in about 5 minutes) while I was looking over my shoulder every few seconds to ensure there was no random manager walk by.
I don't know why, but I was nervous as hell to hit the confirm button. Bettina was too, probably because it was a lot of money when you considered we were each about to book 2 international flights each. However it happened, in our excitement we found that we booked a flight that has a 13 hour layover in London on the way home. Oops...
Okay so you read that right...13 hours to kill in an airport...what to do...well holy hell guess what...our luck was still proving to be holding on strong. You see, while we have a huge layover, it also turns up that the 2012 Summer Olympics are in London this year & they start 2 days before we have the layover!
Looks like a trip to Ireland with a short day in London is in my future with good friends and a guaranteed good tie!!
Two words...bad ass!!
More to come...
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