I’m dying to go on another trip! I keep checking the local time in Germany because my parents are there right now visiting my brother. It’s about 11pm now, so they are probably asleep…after a long day of touring Heidelberg, the castles, the amazing food, the beer, everything…. I want to go! I love traveling, I’ll live off of rice and beans if that means I can go somewhere new at least once a year. 🙂 Last year as my husband (fiancé at the time) and I were deciding on honeymoon locations, Ireland ended up being at the top of both of our lists. I always knew I wanted a November wedding for two reasons, Florida’s weather is perfect in November and travel to Ireland is less expensive 🙂 November is the start of their off season, so yes we were able to get incredibly cheap tickets and off season pricing. So I thought, while I’m longing to go on a trip somewhere, that I would share a few of my travel tips and recommendations for your Ireland holiday.
First tip, traveling in Europe’s off season, October-April will save you some $. I personally like November because the weather wasn’t too bad yet (yes we did have some rainy days) and if you go toward the end of the month, they are decorated for Christmas! I book my international plane tickets about 3-5 weeks before the trip, plane tickets typically go down closer to the travel date. We also opted not to book all our hotels before we left. We wanted to wing it for part of our trip, which did prove to work out well. We did book our first few nights in Dublin via Priceline before we left. Since there are only about five 5-star hotels in Dublin, we named our own price on Priceline for a 5-star hotel and ended up with a killer deal. We stayed at the Conrad Dublin for about $100 off per night on their normal rates. I highly recommend the hotel, the staff was wonderful (we arrived in Ireland at about 4am, the Conrad let us check in when we arrived for no extra charge!), the rooms were clean and comfortable, and we were walking distance to St. Stephen’s Green and Grafton Street.
We got a late start our first day, we finally woke up around 3pm (Ireland is 5 hours ahead of FL time) and enjoyed a stroll through St. Stephen’s Green…
Which brought us right to Grafton Street which was always quite busy.
Our first official stop? I couldn’t help but grab a cup of coffee at Starbucks and get my souvenir mug (note how thrilled the hubs is, haha). 🙂
Christmas decorations at night on Grafton Street!!!
We ate at the Vat House located in the center of Temple Bar on Anglesea Street. I must say I have never really craved Irish food until I ate in there in Ireland. I partly think it is because they don’t have all the MSG, pesticides, hormones, and whatever else that we add here in the States. It is simple food, done VERY well! My husband and I still drool over the thought of ALL of the meals we had over there.
We then completed our first evening in Dublin with Irish coffee and a walk along the River Liffey.
I have more tips on travel there in Ireland, but alas I must stop here…I need to go check airline tickets and see if there are any cheap ones coming up! All this reminiscing is making me want to go back 🙂
We went last summer! LOVED IT!!!!
Amazing pics of Ireland! I want to go now!!