In this episode we do a deep dive and share why we think Ireland is the perfect family destination! If you are considering a road trip internationally, or just looking for a suggestion on where to travel with kids – we think you are going to love Ireland too. Listen in for some suggestions, tips and of course to hear our biggest travel mistake to date.
Thanks so much for listening! Did you Pack Snacks? is available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts &Spotify. If you love listening, we’d appreciate you leaving a kind review so much and be sure to leave a note and let us know what you’d like us to talk about next. Thank you!!
Intro
C: Hey, folks, welcome to Did you pack Snacks My name is Colin.
M: And I’m Meg.
C: This is a family travel podcast where we talk all things high, low and the long miles in between of traveling with kids. And this is our second episode. We’re so happy that you’ve decided to come back. I’m glad you are here. If you are here. Thanks for listening.
C: Thanks for leaving all your kind reviews and your views and your shares. All that matters to a small podcast like this. We are live from our guest bedroom.
Our neighbor is mowing his lawn, but we should be fine and we’re happy to be here. We had a great week, didn’t we? We sure did. It was fun. We just got back.
M: We kind of mentioned it on the last podcast, but we just got back from our yearly trip down to Oak Island.
C: This kind of like kicked off the summer for us. Yeah, it was late May. The weather was mostly cooperating. Yeah, spending time with family was great. Had a lot of ice cream, had a lot of long walks on the beach, and our kids are just at this age where they can, like, play. Yeah, at the beach. And we can be like, we’re involved, but we can also take a step back. Right further up the beach.
C+ M: And it feels good away from the cold water. Right? And it feels nice. Yeah, they’re six and four. And anytime there’s like other families that are around the same age of beach friends at the moment, just for beach friends, there was a family.
M: Well, they were actually twin little boys. They were the same age as Char that were visiting with their grandma. And the first day at the beach, you know, the kids kind of like played for a second, but then, you know, didn’t really hang out much. But by day two, they were full on beach friends. And those boys kept our girls busy for the rest of the week. I’m so thankful for those friends, beach friends.
C: You don’t know anything about them. Low investment, the mutually beneficial, Mutually beneficial. Because you’re you’re sitting on the beach at the same time, same week, right? It’s just bound to be a friendship. So anyway, that was good. I’m really happy. I will say a con this week. There was one day.
Yeah, that I was just attacked by. I don’t know what this is, is someone if someone knows, but this insect is. Please let us know because it’s either a gnat or sand fleas. Right? But they kind of. They ate us alive that last day. That last day there was no wind maybe. And that’s why. Right. A bit of like, okay, yeah.
C: I don’t know. But anyway, it it didn’t put a damper on my trip. I had a great time. We’re back in South Carolina. We went and saw The Little Mermaid, which was great, was fine. The girls loved it. Everything was just beautifully done, right. But now we’re here and we’re ready for episode two. Which one are we gonna talk about today?
C: Today we are doing a deep dive on all things Ireland, which is at the top of our list of places that families should travel to, especially from America. We’re going to give you a recap of all the places that we went to. We’re going to kind of share some of the things on why it’s good for families to go.
M: We’re going to share our biggest travel mistake ever
Travel Horror Stories
C: and it was completely my fault. So speaking of travel mistakes, before we jump into all things Ireland, I kind of want to ask you first, what is your worst travel experience?
M: Why are we going there just for fun? Just for fun, just to get this, I don’t know, get us warmed up.
C + M: Yeah learn from our mistakes. Yeah, well, can’t count if it was before. Kids. Doesn’t matter where you’re traveling. I was traveling. Okay, cool. Okay, so after college, I moved to India for the summer, and I was living there by myself. But I had some friends that were in northern India in an area called Manali, and so I had to take a bus ride.
C: You were in where?
M: I was in Delhi at this point. Okay. India remains. When I got on the bus, I was in Delhi, which is like central, big city. Okay, I spent most of the summer in another city called Chandigarh. Okay.
C: Either way, it remains a destination that I want to go to. Have not been yet. Our kids haven’t been yet.
Meg’s been there how many times? Like a lot.
M: Like ten.
C: You may or may not have a tattoo of India.
M: I got it when I was 18.
C: People think is Texas like, Wow, that girl loves Texas. Yeah, it’s like a little outline of the country on my ankle. But anyway, next time, if you see if you see Meghan in person, look for the tattoo.
M: Anyway, I was getting on the bus. It was like something like 14 hours. I mean, because we were going up mountain roads and I was by myself and, well, I knew that it was going to be a rough trip. Well, the bus was inexpensive. That’s why I did it. But when I got on the bus, my seat, the seat in front of me was broken.
Like it didn’t catch. So the guy was just permanently reclined. And he was also a little bit tipsy. And throughout the night, he kept like throwing his arm back on me and I would throw it back on him. So then I was like, Well, you know, if somebody in front of you is reclining their seat, you’re also going to want to get the space and recline, which I know that’s like a hot topic on airplanes.
But if the person in front of me is leaning back, I’m also going to lean back. Sure. Okay. So I try to lean back, but the lady behind me has put her infant baby on her seat and she’s sitting on the ground with her back to my chair. So she’s properly on the ground sitting. So when I recline, it’s like hitting her head.
Oh, because she’s letting her baby have her seat. She’s on the floor. She wins. So she immediately is like, No, it’s just my seat up. The lady next to me is like, You can’t do that. She’s on the ground. So I’m like, Well, dang, I guess I just have this grown man in my lap for the rest of the trip.
C: Were they sort of like, you’re a foreigner, we’re not going to treat you nice. Kind of.
M: I don’t even know if it was. I think it was more that that was a mom and a baby. So like, Yeah, let the baby sleep. You know? Like, Yeah, yeah, She’s taking care of a baby. You’re fine.
C+M: You didn’t pay for, like, first class. There was no first class reserved seating. No, it wasn’t like that at all. It was just kind of like a low for us on the bus. I was actually in the second row, but it was just like. It’s just a way to get people from one point to the other. There was nothing luxury about it. Okay. Okay. But the worst part of this experience.
C: Oh, it gets worse.
M: Yeah. After spending 8 hours with this man in my lap, I’m not sleeping. We’re winding around. People are puking because everyone gets motion sickness on these busses.
C: Northern India is like going through the mountains.
M: Okay, we stop at this rest stop to get chai. Very typical. And we’ve made a couple of stops, But this one, the bathroom was, like, nasty.
M: Like I can’t even it would just people would want to stop listening if I just told them how bad it was. I mean, there’s some of those in America, right? But this is a squatty potty. So you’re just I mean, the ground is just wet, risky, risky. So I’m wearing traditional Indian clothing like a kurta that goes to my knees.
So I have to kind of roll that up. But I’m wearing these, like, pillow, like, baggy pants underneath. So I have to say, I’m trying to basically there’s a lot of things on my body, a lot of clothes I’m trying to maneuver how to use this squatty potty on the ground. That’s disgusting. While also holding my breath. It was just a lot to juggle on a little sleep when you were holding your chai.
Okay. Long story short, I thought that I’d mastered it because I had done this a few times. You know, Squatty Potties are very squatty. Well, what am I trying to say? How would you describe a squatting potty? Well, I’m just saying that I’ve used them many, many times.
They’re very prominent in Indian bathrooms. Okay, cool. But this one, for some reason, I just. I just missed. Okay. And my pants were soaking wet with, like, pee. Like, I just didn’t get it all the way out of the way. I messed up. Yeah, And so then I have to, like, rinse off my clothes, right? So there’s a spigot, and I’m, like, rinsing, wringing out my clothes, and then I’m not sure I want to tell this story.
C: Just give us the cliff notes.
M: That was it. So I clean my clothes to the best of my ability. I’m tired, I’m mad, I’m frustrated at myself. I get back on the bus and I have another six or so hours in wet pants. Yeah, because I wasn’t able to access. That’s the worse you win. Worst travel. Except now it was pretty bad.
It was pretty miserable in the moment.
C: I feel bad for asking you this question.
M: I know you just got it out of me and I regretted it halfway through because I just told the world that I peed on my pants once. That’s all right. We all have, haven’t we? All? All right. That was. What about you? Do you have an embarrassing story?
C: Mine’s not embarrassing, per se. Maybe more of like a nightmare. Mine was like, coming from the guy that’s never broken a bone, never gone to the hospital. This is by far my worse medical situation. And it’s us in Seoul on a very rainy night. And I was like, I’m going to be a good dad, servant and dad, and I’m just going to go get pizza and bring it home.
Yeah, but I at this point in our in our trip, I didn’t pack flip flops. Yeah. So the, the Airbnb we were staying at had these, you know, the cheap kind of like the old Navy flip flops. Right. Rubber. So I’m walking two miles to this pizza joint and I brought back the pizza, got back to our house…
Oh, gosh. And it’s a glass door where you, like, enter a code. To enter the code, I flung it open and then right when I’m going into the house, I slid in the glass door, came back at the same time, and boom, I had this gash on my foot. I basically took the top layer, skinned it up right.
And I didn’t want to look down like it was the worst thing that has ever happened to me physically, ever. I got upstairs and started washing it and I almost like passed out.
M: And when you came in and, you know, obviously I could see that you’d had an accident, I was like, the girls are panicking.
And so somebody has to keep it cool, right? So I’m like, It’s okay, let’s just go to the bathroom. So it was a walk in shower and he just stood under the water. And as soon as the water so much red, so much red. Well, as soon as I saw the actual gash, I was like, okay, so we’re going to we’re going to get you to a hospital this is big.
And meanwhile, Charlotte, Sweet thing, is in the kitchen, and she drew a picture of Colin crying, and then she drew like a river of red. There’s a next level to this nightmare.
C: Yeah, because that same night, the Tottenham Hotspur were playing against Seoul FC and the stadium. The World Cup Stadium is like two miles from my house. No taxis available, no one’s driving.
M: Everyone’s like, This is the worst night. So we decide to call our host that in the place that we were staying, which we’d done before. You know, usually you can get restaurant recommendations, doctor recommendations. We call our host and we’re like, Hey, we can’t get a ride for Colin because of the game. Can you help us?
Like, you know, she lived literally in the apartment upstairs. Her car was outside. Like, can you help us just get him to a hospital? Yeah. And she it’s like, what, 5:30 p.m. something when she just replies back. I’ve already had too much to drink today. I’m not able.
C: No, she was blunt. She was just like, I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m drunk. Yeah. So eventually we got one taxi. Yeah. And that night I came home at about like one or two in the morning with my first ever stitches.
M: Yeah, but shout out to the Korean medical system because they were so diligent. Like Colin went back multiple times that week. I went back three times a week to get it cleaned and inspected.
C: And yeah, it was that was a nightmare. Sorry about that. I don’t know. It’s kind of equal to like sitting in pee on 8 hours bus ride.
M: I’m not sure I think you might win, but we’re not here to compete. We’re just here to share. We’re just here along for the ride. Happy to be here. But maybe next time we should do a segment of ask the people.
C: Let them tell their stories so we can share them on the show. Yeah, Please send us some stories. Send us some good ones so we can read on the show. Very funny.
M: Okay, so moving on. Glad we’re moving on. Let’s talk all things Ireland. We got to go there back in March for the first time and we had so much fun.
C: It was a great trip, right? I just you just hear people hear stories about people loving Ireland. Yeah. And it’s one of those places that you see in all the rom coms, my favorite rom com. I don’t know why, but it’s Leap Year like I’ve seen a lot. I don’t know why. I just like Leap Year. I think it’s the esthetic of Ireland.
Yeah, probably. And so I’ve always had the back of my mind. I’m like, okay, one day we’ll go there.
M: But yeah, and Dublin and you’ve already talked about it on the previous podcast. Lisbon Those two cities are kind of the gateway to get to Europe on a budget, right? Because our tickets to Ireland were in the three low three hundreds per person. And again, that was in March, which is typically like an off season. But we were also there over St Patrick’s Day, which was a surprise. We didn’t know that we weren’t doing it intentionally, but then, you know, we were like, Oh wow, that’s a fun thing that ended up happening.
C: Also, can I add? Yeah, we flew with Play Airlines, which is an Icelandic airline, and you could for an extra couple hundred bucks, you could have a few days in Iceland, you can add a layover for no additional cost.
M: Yeah. Not sponsored by Play. Yeah, but we would be sponsor. But hey. But yeah, Ireland was so much fun. We’re going to share kind of like our road trip where we went and then some reasons why we think it would be a great family vacation for you to plan for your fam fam yeah, fam fam family and some reasons why it would be a great vacation for you to plan for your family.
Ireland Recap
Biggest Travel Mistake EVER
M: But first we have to share our biggest travel mistake ever.
C: Yeah, and this goes with our recap of the country. So let me just set the scene. Set the scene. I’m usually the planner of the trips and I had you know, I’ve done all my reading. I’ve made the whole itinerary on the flights, on the hotels, and I have it all on my phone and we got to Dublin and we showed up at the hotel.
We flew a redeye. Would you consider that a red eye? Yes, we did. Yeah, it was a it was a redeye.
M: By the time we got to Ireland, it was like the morning and we hadn’t slept since we left the states. Right. So we were basically starting the day off, assuming that we were going to check into a hotel, have a nap, you know, get the kids out, maybe visit Dublin in the evening, go back to sleep.
And we typically try to plan trips like this at the first day. We do nothing because regardless of if you’re going, you know, just a 3 to 4 hour flight or a nine hour flight, when you get there, you’re wiped. So the plan was to check in to this airport hotel, take a shower, grab some breakfast, take a nap, and then maybe explore a little bit in the afternoon.
Yeah, but then what happened now?
C: Yeah, we were so excited. I got to the counter and I was checking in. He goes and she goes, You don’t have a reservation? And I go, Oh no, it’s under my name. And then she goes, Oh, that was for yesterday. But when I looked at my phone, all the dates were wrong.
Yeah, this guy, the vacation planner, had everything a day ahead. And so everything. We were just late. We were late.
M: And I will say we’ve grown and in our travels that, you know, maybe a few years ago, this would have been this moment that we just like, we’re upset. Like, what are we going to do? But Colin was just like, first, before we talk about anything, let’s go eat.
C: Well, this was your rule, remember? Because we would have, like a lot of hard travel moments. We were always hungry. And your rule was every time we hit a snag, let’s stop at a cafe. Yeah. Get coffee, get a snack, Something just to, like, detach a little bit. Yeah. And so I was like, Oh, I’m stealing Meghan’s idea.
I was like, Is your breakfast buffet open yet? Great. I walked up to Meghan and I said, I just fessed up. I said, I booked everything wrong. We’re going to eat first, talk about it and we’ll talk about it. So after a quiet meal, Well, and the reason why this was like a big deal is we had plans for St Patrick’s Day, so we got there on like March 15th or something like that.
M: Yeah. And we just needed to be somewhere by St Patrick’s Day. And so that kind of just messed with our itinerary. So we talked about our options and we were like, okay, we’re exhausted, but what if we just drove as far as we can today to get as close to our where we’re supposed to be, and we’ll just see what happens.
And so ultimately plan A would be that we drove 4 hours and we caught up with our bookings and then the rest of the trip, everything was correct. You know, things had to catch up for that one day that we were missing. So we put the girls in the rental car. We were like, They can sleep, That’s fine.
C: The car was already rented.
M: The car was already rented, and we just stopped it. Every gas station and we hiked the whole time. Every 45 minutes we pulled over. We got coffee or drink or a snack, and then we just talked. And by the time we finally got to our first stop was right outside of a small town called Dingle.
And when we pulled into our B+B, we were so tired. But I’m really glad that we pushed through because then the rest of the trip went the way it was supposed do, right?
C: I mean, it took like two days to catch up for our bodies to catch up. The also remember that we, like, got the cheapest car. Yeah.
And like, we didn’t even have music this entire epic road trip. I had audiobooks downloaded and we couldn’t even connect. Well, it had Bluetooth, but it just we couldn’t figure it out. Everything was still in Japanese. Japanese? Yeah. It’s just kind of funny. And every time you hit the GPS button, it showed like our car was in the middle of the ocean.
M: Oh, and then I remember when we got to the beach and we were like, We’re going straight to sleep no matter what time it is. Yeah. And then our hosts, there was like a literal pub on the basement floor. Yeah. And he was like, Don’t go to sleep, let me make you dinner. And so we were like, Oh, that’s so nice.
Okay. So he sat down at the pub for dinner thinking, okay, we’ll be in bed an hour. It was a long time to make dinner.
C + M: I don’t know if this is Irish pub culture or not. It’s just a lot of chatting. It’s just like, Yeah, everything was slow. Laughs Yeah, chatty. He took our orders and then he was like, Oh, I need to go stoke the fireplace, then go cut some wood.
M: Yeah. And I think and I think there’s part of that that’s really beautiful. It was just our personal experience. Yeah. We were like, We need to physically close our eyes. We’ve been awake for over a day. And so that dinner we probably didn’t appreciate it as much as we should have. Yeah, but we did get Guinness, so we started the trip off right.
C: Yeah. I mean, it was still magical though. And again, we drove from Dublin to Dingle coast to coast. Not the plan, but Dingle was like all my rom com dreams are coming true because that’s where Amy Adams landed. Instead of Dublin, she got to Dingle and this guesthouse we pulled up and it looked exactly like it did, you know, except my clothes are dry and, you know, I wasn’t wearing high heels, but it was everything I wanted it to be.
Dingle
We stayed in a guesthouse for €60 a night. Yeah. And you stayed upstairs in the old cottage, and everything’s just like your grandma’s house. And I was like, That is what I want. And so, yeah. So that was a rough, rocky start, but I think it ended pretty quaintly, would you say?
M: Yeah, I loved it. And then let’s give kind of an overview.
We don’t want to kind of go into too much detail about all of our stops because that would take a long time. Huh? But you, if you’re planning a trip to Ireland, all of these experiences are captured on videos that you can find on our YouTube channel. Yeah. So you could do a deep dive there, right? Kind of share from Dingle, which is where we did St Patrick’s Day and the epic Sunrise Parade.
C: More like Rain is 6 a.m. parade. Well, epic and in a sense of like a cultural experience, right? Yeah. But then we, we then we then later read on the paper that they were like, Oh yeah, it was mild. Yeah. They said it wasn’t considered a really rainy day compared to like past St Patrick’s Day. Oh. But it was raining.
M: But it was raining so I was like, Oh that’s funny. Okay, so we did Dingle And then where do we go from there?
Limerick
C: Okay, we did the Dingle parade and then we went to so we did St Patrick’s Day all in one day in three locations. Yeah. So we were in Dingle at 6 a.m.. We then we drove to another bigger city called Limerick where we saw I just googled work and you find great St Patrick’s Day parade and Limerick was one of them.
Cliffs of Moher
We enjoyed it there. And then we drove to our Airbnb at a farm right by the Cliffs of Moher. Yeah. And. And then that’s where we stayed in this cottage that was as old as the United States.
M: And you could walk to a viewpoint of the cliffs from there, which was so cool.
C: It was amazing. Yeah, we did that walk several times.
Yes, it was. It was beautiful. It was epic. It was windy. And and the thing about rain that we learn in Ireland, even in the parade, even at the cliffs, is that no one bats an eye when it rains.
M: And it rained, it would come and go so fast. We have like blue skies again. This is in March. So the weather obviously changes throughout the year. Yeah, but it would be completely blue skies and then rain would come in for like 15 minutes to 20 minutes and then it would go out again. Right. And it was just like you had to be prepared for all kinds of weather.
C: But like sort of prepared because nobody was walking around with umbrellas or rain boots.
M: Yeah. When we were at the parade in Limerick. Yeah. They’re like, it rained like kind of with the sun was out, there’s a little bit of rain and nobody, nobody flinched. Some people like casually just like put on their hoods but yeah, no umbrellas and people just carried on. And then when it was done, hoods went down and life went on.
But the parade didn’t stop. Nobody left.
C: And I have nothing against like, dressing up as a tourist. But if you want to look like a tourist, bring a rain jacket.
M: I mean, I had a rain jacket.
C: Yeah, you know, But yeah, no one cared. And so but again, at the cliffs, it was like we would experience gray skies to blue skies. And so just I would just say, let the thought of weather kind of be there, but not let it overtake or overwhelm your trip.
M: Yeah, yeah. Don’t look at the forecast and be discouraged. Just know that there’s going to be rain and sunshine on the same day. Yeah.
Galway
C: So yes. So back to the recap from the cliffs. We did a quick drive to Galway, which wasn’t far & Galway. It felt like the most culturally like full of culture. Small town.
M: Isn’t it known for music? Yes, there was a lot of live music going on, which could be another part of the St Patrick’s Day weekend celebrations.
C: But there was just music. I mean, between the smell of fish and chips and like an array of cool coffee shops, the cool bunting, little flags in the alleys.
And then you would see buskers, good buskers. There were some even like younger, like teenage girls that could sing so well and their dads were like filming them, handing out their CDs and stuff. So yeah, there was a music festival in the middle of the square. We had fun in Galway. We didn’t spend all day there. We then drove.
We were trying to get to Derry and so we swung by Donegal and that was where we stayed at Peggy’s Airbnb. I remember Peggy’s sweet, sweet, sweet Peggy. We didn’t get to meet her, but she was a great host. She was great. Like what?
M: She left as a pie. She left us a pie. And I think, yeah, and the fireplace was on when we got there.
C: And we’re going to list all the Airbnbs hotels, guest houses, all in the show notes. So check that out. But yeah, we didn’t spend much time in that area.
M: No, but she was a great pit stop. She was a great pit stop.
C: Now, there are a lot of cool things that you can do in Donegal, but we were on our way to Derry.
Derry
Yes, because I am a huge Derry Girls fan and if you don’t know what the Derry Girls are, who they are, you are missing out in life
M: especially if you’re planning a trip to Ireland. I feel like you need to commit to watching that show.
C: Oh my gosh, there’s three seasons. And three seasons is not enough. Not enough. But yeah, it’s a show that’s set in the nineties. I won’t go all into it. Go check it. Go check it out. We also stayed in Derry.
M: I’m going to add this in because I don’t think we’ve shared about this yet, but Colin is a remote employee and we arrived in Derry on a monday, so we knew that at the beginning of a week he would need to hold normal working hours and that we need to just stay put.
So we worked that into our itinerary. So if you’re a digital nomad, that’s just something to keep in mind. You can just schedule a few days without a lot of things to do. So we parked ourselves in a city where we knew it’d be easy to get meals and walk around, and we just had a few days where we kind of caught up from the back to back to back.
Yes, that we had planned so far. So just like know your family, know your schedule. But we did spend about three days in Derry, so that connected concrete work.
C: Yeah. And we stayed at the Malden Hotel, which is kind of like the Holiday Inn of Ireland. Right. Okay. So from Derry, we went to all the Northern Ireland sites.
We drove past this little town called Portrush, where there is an episode of Derry Girls filmed there. But from there you start, you are now you’re on the coast, right? And it’s beautiful. Oh gosh. Now when I say perfect road trip, destination Ireland in itself is great. Yeah, but Northern Ireland is like a mini version of that.
Northern Ireland
Yeah. You know, and everything’s like 30 minutes away from each other. Yeah. Which you can, you can kind of do in Northern Ireland in a day or two. And so that’s what we did. We went to Giant’s Causeway, we went to the Carrick-a-rede Rope Bridge, which involved a quick hike. And of course, if you promise ice cream, all hikes are great that way.
M: We did the trees, the Game of Thrones, What’s it called? It’s called the Dark Hedges.
C: And then I think my favorite part was where we slept that night was a cool place. Yeah. So shout out to the vacation planner. We found these, like, glamping pods, basically.
M: We were really close to so many of the Northern Ireland sites, like 10 minutes from a town, but we’re staying on a farm and right in front of us there is like cows.
There is a Scottish highland cow. There were llamas. And it just made for a very like picturesque backdrop to all the road trip binds, all the road trip vibes and. But you had a bathroom, you had a mini kitchen, you had we had beds. It was it was awesome.
Dublin
M: So from there we made our final we drove all the way back down to Dublin and on the tail end of our time in Ireland, we were actually flying to another country after Ireland, but we booked two nights in Dublin so that we could properly explore the city, which I’m so glad we did since it didn’t work on the front end.
C: Yeah, so we did 24 hours in Dublin where we saw we got the your classic hop on Hop Off Bus, which we highly recommend. Love those. Yeah. Love them. Yeah. I will say though the best one so far is Ireland, right. Because we got on the one, It’s a company called Do Dublin so the hopping hop off bus is usually read right if you’ve done this thing a couple of times before.
But Dublin has its own called Do Dublin and the conductors are all hilarious
M: and they take you to everywhere that you want to go. And so for us, when we’re exploring a new city, we like to incorporate things that we want to see, which we had a list, and then we want to ask the girls what they want to do.
And they wanted to head to the zoo. So we just wanted to stop by some places that we wanted to go to. So I think our first stop was like St Patrick’s Cathedral. And then we went to the Guinness Storehouse because we actually met a couple waiting for the bus that had done Dublin for a few days and they were like, Oh, if you don’t want to do a tour of the Guinness Storehouse, which we knew that our girls would not be down for that they were like, Oh, just go eat lunch there.
So I thought that was fun. We just got to do that. We weren’t planning on it. Yeah. Then we went to the zoo for a while, which it was a beautiful zoo in the zoo, actually.
C: Meghan it is located in Phoenix Park, which is a little known fact about Dublin. The Phoenix Park is kind of like Central Park in Manhattan.
It is beautiful, but this is the biggest park in all of Europe. Wow. I know. I don’t know why they don’t, like, advertise that more, but. Or maybe they do. We just don’t get it here. But yeah, Phoenix Park was great. Beautiful, well taken care of. There’s a zoo in it, which was a great zoo. And then we went to went back on the hopping hop off bus to our last stop, which was the temple bar.
And it’s an area there is a bar called Temple Bar, which we did visit. Yeah, but that whole district, when people say, Oh yeah, the temple bar, it’s like an area across from the Ha’Penny Bridge in the city, across the river, as they would say. And that’s where you’ll find all the quintessential pubs with the live music and the traditional Irish food.
That’s where every tourist and everyone in the city apparently was hanging out. Yeah.
M: And I thought that maybe we’d missed out on that because you don’t really want to bring little kids into a bar setting at night. But I read some reviews online that were like, just go really early. So I think we got there around like 4:30-4: 45 Yeah.
And I was expecting to walk in to like an empty restaurant and it was packed. Yeah, the music was loud. They were already playing. People were having a great time. And just like the luck of the draw, we found a table right up front, right by the stage, and we just decided to hang out for like, we’re probably there for 30 or 45 minutes.
Yeah, and it was great. We didn’t eat, we just got drinks. The girls loved to dance to the music and then we headed out, so we missed that like late night bar scene. But we didn’t miss the experience of what that place has to offer. Yeah, So I would just say, if you plan on doing something like that, just go early.
C: Yeah. What was the other romcom? Not leap year, but the other one with Gerard Butler, it’s like,
M: PS, I love you. Yes. And that is like peaceful love you. VIVES Oh my. As soon as I walk in, there’s a guy that looks like Gerard Butler. He’s playing all the songs and I’m like, Oh my gosh, that’s true, right?
C: This is where you want to have a meet cute.
M: And then and then just a little dose of reality. We leave that bar and now we’re like, ready for dinner. And Colin and I, you know, we like to eat local things when we’re visiting places, so we’re like looking at where we could eat that was around where we could get some like Irish stew or something that would just be fun.
Yeah, but we asked our girls since we went to the bar, we’re like, okay, you get to pick our next stop and all they wanted were McDonald’s Happy Meals. Yeah, because they literally saw the McDonald’s there was in front of it. Yeah, it was right in front of us. They would just like pull it out of thin air.
So we went to McDonald’s. We got them Happy Meals, and then we left to go eat our dinner. Right. So sometimes it just kind of there’s a little give and take. Yeah. Everyone’s still end of the night. Yeah. Happy? Yeah. So it was fun.
C: So yeah, Ireland as a whole, I think I went into it with the filter of like this is going to be, is going to look epic.I hope to meet some kind people. Yeah. Have a lot of great local interactions and that’s exactly what you like, what you expect Ireland to be, what you see in Hollywood is not that far off. Ah yeah, I agree. I mean, I would say, you know, of course you have the cinematic shots and all that, but I think the essence of what they’re trying to portray on the movies you can find like especially like I found that when we were there.
Final thoughts: Why to consider a family trip to Ireland
M: Okay, so what would you say are like a few reasons why someone should consider this as like a great family destination? Yeah.
C: So I don’t know about y’all, but I think we’ve kind of from all our travels with what’s that word where you like zone, then you’ve narrowed in. Yes. You’re focused, synthesized. I wouldn’t have guessed that word.
The ideal trip is always it involves a road trip. We love a road trip because I love just driving and stopping any time I want. Yeah. You know, and having that sort of control and it’s conducive for kids because you have to stop for the bathroom. You’ve got to stop for snacks and we need coffee.
Yeah. So that’s why I this, that’s my number one reason. Ireland is a great road trip country and that’s higher ranked all my countries based on their road trip. Yeah. And their roads are nice. It’s there’s a lot of highways. There’s also small roads, but it’s not too scary. But yeah. And the roadside stops. Yeah. Come on. They’ve got gas stations, right?
C: Yeah. So you got good gas stations. You’re off to a great start. There’s an espresso machine in every one of these places.
M: I would also say another great reason why I would suggest Ireland is it felt very kid friendly, like we’ve gotten to places before where we feel like we are in the way. Yeah, and and that’s fine, you know, I mean, that’s just the vibe of some places that we’ve been to.
Yeah, but Ireland never felt like that from visiting pubs to visiting these outdoor landmarks to walking in the city, there was always something to offer kids. And if there wasn’t, people were very welcoming to them. I mean, we’d sit down in a restaurant and they’d bring over like something for the kids to color or they’d interact with our kids.
C: That’s not even included. They’re like, run to their office to collect something. Yeah, to keep them entertained, or We’re grabbing ice cream. They’re interacting with not just us, but our kids too. Yeah, and there’s just that. And we felt that through our whole time there. Like, it wasn’t just like, one thing.
C: Can I talk about May? May and her friend in Dingle.
Oh, sure. Yeah. So, like, we weren’t planning to go at the 6 a.m. parade for St Patrick’s Day. I don’t even know if we knew about it, but we just knew about their afternoon parade. I knew about it, but I had low expectations. I was like, especially after our big mistake. But we met May at the grocery store and as soon as we walked in the store, I kind of noticed that she was like noticing us, letting us like, wandered aisles, looking for things. But I could tell she was wanting to chat with us. Yeah. And eventually she found a way because we were like our kids were kind of running amok. And she was like, Don’t worry about them. Like, let them be kids.
M: Yeah. And I think I probably was telling them to, like, don’t run around, stay with me. And she was like, Let them be kids.
C: And then she went on to tell us about Parade. She’s like, I’ll be there. And then sure enough, the next day at 6 a.m., we saw me in the parade and like, just things like that. People were just eager to interact with my kids. Yeah, it’s super kid friendly.
M: Okay, so what’s another another reason why we tell people to go to Ireland?
C: Lots of outdoor, beautiful spots, Right. And so I will say that the recap that we just gave you is not one that you would find on all the blogs. Yeah, because of from all the research that I did, people loved castles, people loved history. They instead of driving straight to Dingle, they would go to the southern part of Ireland, which is what a lot of the blogs online cover.
Mostly you’ll find a lot of stuff about Southern Ireland, not a lot about stuff in the North, but they would go to like towns like Waterford or, you know, they would do the Ring of Kerry. All these like historical spots. We didn’t do as much because I knew our kids wouldn’t be interested, maybe in our part 2 trip to Ireland we would, Yeah, but lots of outdoor spots, which is why I chose Dingle, because we did whole road trip around the peninsula.
We did we chose to stay by the cliffs instead of doing a day trip there. Right. You know, and we chose to have like, yeah, a day and a half there in Northern Ireland. It was all outdoors. We spent half a day just roaming around Giant’s Causeway and doing a hike. And I will say there is a part of Ireland that I wish we went to.
Okay, well, it’s called Glendalough. It’s right underneath Dublin, an hour away. Apparently. It’s beautiful. It’s where a lot of the films are filmed. But we didn’t get to go, which that’s why we need to go back. Yeah, but that’s another bonus for me. Our family, we love road trips, gas stations, lots of snacks, good food, good people and we love nature. So that’s why I’m giving Ireland a ten out of ten.
M: Ten out of ten starting it high. It’s like, do they all that you know or they’ll have a totally different metric system. Yeah, but I will say in planning, there are so many different guides online. In planning your trip to Ireland, we hope that we can offer some insight.
Like I said, through the content that we’ve shared about our experience there. But really I believe that if you had there, you can’t plan a bad trip, no luck. You see what you can in the time that you’re going to be there and you’re going to come home and just have a great experience and make some really great memories.
C: Right? And so, yeah, like Meghan said earlier, there’s five videos on our YouTube channel about our trip to Ireland. You can check that out. And I think that’s all the time we have left to there. You know, that went by kind of fast. I know. Does that mean we’re having fun? I really hope so.
M: If you’re having fun listening to this podcast, yeah, leave us a review, subscribe and circle back next week when we drop another one.
C: What will it be about? Come back to see. Wow. Yep. Leave a review. Share it with your friends. Share it with a neighbor. To all you mums and dads out there. Don’t forget to pack snacks. See you next week.