November 2025: A Magical Birthday Weekend: Day 1

Day 1: Friday November 14, 2025

Surprisingly the day started with my alarm going off at 5. I had fully expected to not sleep, but somehow I did. So I got ready for the day and checked the flight status half a dozen times even though I still had 12 hours until flight time.

After getting ready for work, starting the dishwasher, and leaving myself notes about what needed to be packed for the dogs (and to open the dishwasher) I said goodbye to Nick and headed off to work.

It was an abbreviated work day for me, but it was plenty busy enough. It started with evaluating a not-quite 3 year old for our preschool program and then included some other speech sessions and lots of flight status stalking, before I high-tailed it out the door just before 1:30.

When I got home, I took care of the dogs, processed the final piece of information to accept the insurance payout on the rental car damage sustained in Ireland (until the perks change there will ALWAYS be a Chase sapphire in my credit card collection…paid in full…and the process was easy once I had the paperwork), loaded up the car and we were off!

First stop was to drop Snow off at the kennel. He was his usual friendly obnoxious self and tackled the poor girl taking him in, so I had zero concerns about leaving him. Then it was off to my in-laws’ where Gizmo was staying for the weekend with just John, which is why Snow wasn’t staying too. Not enough attention span would be in the house for that one…

John was…nowhere to be found when we got there, so Gizmo and I hung out in my car for a bit, before John emerged on the tractor from the back woods. We headed inside, where I handed over Gizmo’s bag of food and toys and hoped Nick would show up on time.

Thankfully, Nick walked in a couple minutes later. I got the text from Axis that our car to the airport had been dispatched. And then I got the text from Disney that our room was ready, which sent me googling. Google told me that we were in one of the refurbished rooms that had just reopened in October. Sweet!

And then Mike, the same driver we had had going down to Boston to fly to Dublin this summer pulled in the driveway, so we said goodbye to John and Gizmo and headed out the door, where we grabbed my stuff out of my car and Mike loaded our luggage into…some sort of small Lincoln SUV, that was definitely bigger than I had booked.

It was a comfortable ride down to Boston, although, a little stressful. Traffic was a bit more than I’d hoped for a Friday night going south (usually it’s worse going north). We pulled up at Terminal C about 5:15 for our 6:30 flight. Deep breath!

We headed inside and since there were a ton of open kiosks, I tried to print actual paper boarding passes. The kiosk said they printed, but they definitely did not. So eventually I gave up and acknowledged that we’d have to use electronic boarding passes. Ugh.

There was NO line at the ID portion of pre-check, so we got right through that. We did get stuck behind the really slow couple (yes, you need to have stuff out of your pockets to go through the metal detector!) at the screener, and the TSO that was analyzing luggage was REALLY analyzing luggage, but within a few minutes we were on our way to the pseudo food court, where we ordered bagels from a kiosk. Thankfully, we had those in hand just a few minutes later. We actually had time, so we ate our bagels there, and then headed for the gate.

We got to gate C23 about 10 minutes before boarding was scheduled to begin, so we had just enough time for that last minute bathroom run before we hopped in the giant group B boarding line and boarded JetBlue 1151 to MCO. The electronic boarding passes worked! Technology didn’t glitch at just the wrong moment! We found our seats in row 14 and…holy crap this is really happening!

 
We pushed back a couple minutes late because of some luggage delays (not mine though!) and headed for the runway. I chatted for a few minutes with the girl seated next to me. Turns out she’s a high school special ed administrator. Small world!

Soon enough we were airborne, and it was a pretty smooth and uneventful flight down the coast. I surfed the internet and thoroughly enjoyed the fact that JetBlue now offers Biscoff cookies as a snack choice. We ended up ahead of schedule enough that Epcot’s fireworks welcomed us to Orlando! And we touched down around 9:15…about 40 minutes early!

Deplaning was…the most miserable deplaning experience I’ve experienced. This flight had a LOT of carry on luggage and while we had had no problem (thankfully) getting bin space over our seats, many people had to put their carry ons several rows behind where they were sitting. Logic should tell you to wait until the people behind you have deplaned to go retrieve this luggage, but this wasn’t the case. So, the aisle was pretty much chaos, with people trying to get off the plane, but also people trying to walk further back to get their luggage. Both passengers and flight attendants were heard going “WHAT is going on here?”

Eventually we were freed from that chaos and made the LONG walk to the rental car facility. Seriously, this terminal C is massive. Once we made it down to Alamo, we found a compact SUV, specifically a Hyundai Kona, loaded it up, surveyed it for damage, and once Nick connected my phone via Android Auto…which was a process…as always…we headed for the exit. The chick at the exit was moving in slow mo, but, eventually we were on our way. Always do the online accelerated check in/skip the counter with Alamo folks!

It was an uneventful 30ish minute drive down 417 and World Drive, and soon enough, I guess, we were driving under the blue gates, and soon after that, we were being welcomed to Port Orleans Riverside. We headed for the porte cochere, where I parked and found luggage services. A cast member found my small instacart order (and asked if the two bags containing a 12 pack of water and a 4 pack of muffins was really everything…yes sir, only staying a couple days!), we tossed that in the car, and drove on to building 85.

At building 85, we parked and headed for our room, 8605 on the first floor. Y’all know I hate a first floor room, but I’d forgotten to call Disney to make a room request, and Nick was with me for this trip, so I was less concerned about it. Honestly, this room worked out perfectly.

In the room, I Clorox wiped everything because Norovirus is the devil, took pictures of this very nice newly refurbished room, and then we tried to settle down. You know the vacation adrenaline hit me the moment I saw those Epcot fireworks from the air, so settling down didn’t come easily. We got to the room about 11, which, given the delays getting off the plane and out of the airport, wasn’t too bad. But, we had a VERY busy day ahead of us tomorrow!

November 2025: A Magical Birthday Weekend: Pretrip

Cast of characters:

Me: The 30 something birthday girl. SLP, Disney dork, resident trip planner
Nick: The 30 something husband. Passenger prince, humors my Disney obsession.

The very general idea for this trip probably started back in college when I decided that “someday” I was going to spend my birthday in Disney. Being a mid November baby working in education, this is not the easiest to do. I’ve been the weekend before my birthday a couple times, but never the actual day.

In the last year, I became particularly determined to pull this off. My birthday would be on a Sunday, so that made it doable. And after a few…rough…birthdays, and a few rough years in general, I became ok with the idea of taking a personal day to create a long weekend. My usual personal days are for things like furnace fixes, or poorly timed weddings, and I always neglect to use at least one. It’s time to do something for me. And…4 years ago, my grandmother’s funeral stuff started the day after my birthday and last year I was still struggling enough with bouncing back from (undiagnosed at that point) walking pneumonia that I couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs. So…time for an off the charts fun birthday!

Last spring when it became clear that I had the points for the flights, I got the flights and hotel booked. We’d be spending 3 nights at Port Orleans Riverside. Flights would be JetBlue nonstop MHT-MCO and Southwest MCO-BWI-MHT. Trip would be Friday night November 14 to Monday November 17. I figured we’d do MVMCP plus do a day at Animal Kingdom with the park pass that I had bought but not used for Epcot when we got rained out in February.

Then summer rolled around and it was announced that not only would MVMCP happen during our long weekend, but so would Jollywood Nights. So, over the course of the summer, I bought tickets for both events!

While we were in Ireland, JetBlue emailed saying that my wonderful 7 pm flight out of Manchester had been changed to a 7 AM flight out of MHT. WTF…that won’t work! JetBlue runs just one flight a day from MHT-MCO, so I called up JetBlue to find out if we could switch to a flight from Boston. I got the runaround about how they could do that if the two airports are “co-located” from someone who clearly does not know New England geography. She found that they were (duh) and switched me to…the 6:30 am flight. Of course this was noticed as soon as I got off the phone, so I had to call back and jump through some hoops, but eventually I got switched to the 6:29 pm flight from Boston to MCO. Surprisingly, Southwest didn’t change my flight schedule at all.

The countdown got smaller. I got more plans in place. The government shut down. I did more planning. The government stayed shut down. Flights started getting cut. I started freaking out.

Thankfully, because I hadn’t bought trip insurance before the government shut down since I was still getting things in place and wanted to be able to insure the full cost of the trip…so I was out of luck on the trip insurance front, the government reopened approximately 36 hours before go time. I took a giant leap of faith and packed a few days before the trip, and checked flight schedules every few hours from then on to see which flights were being cut, etc.

The day before the trip was a race to get all the reports finished and school stuff set for the following week. Nick packed, I did an Instacart order for delivery to the resort, and Gizmo sulked. But…I think this trip might happen!

August 2025: Our First Trip to Ireland: Day 9, The End

Day 9: Sunday August 17, 2025

And just like that, the trip is over…well…sort of.

I dragged my feet but eventually got up and started getting ready for the day. We all met downstairs for breakfast at Copper Alley Bistro again. I think we all basically had the same breakfast as the previous day. It was a fairly limited menu, but it got the job done, especially since breakfast places are definitely not as big a thing in Ireland…and especially not on a Sunday.

After breakfast, we headed back to the rooms for the last of the packing (all of us needed to join the suitcase expansion zipper club), and then met downstairs with our luggage probably half an hour later. The guy at the front desk stored all of our luggage for us, and we set out to explore a bit more of Dublin.

First stop was Dublin Castle. We skipped the interior tour here and just wandered around the exterior. Not really what I picture when I think castle, but cool just the same.

When we finished exploring Dublin Castle, we walked a few more blocks to Anne’s Lane, to see the umbrellas. This was…not as big or as pretty as it looks online. Cool, but…it’s a pretty short span of umbrellas in a smelly alley.

Then we headed towards St Stephen’s Green. This took us down Grafton Street, which was just starting to come to life at this point in the day. It was clear that this was a higher end shopping area. Lots of brands that don’t exist, or at least don’t have their own store fronts in NH. And then there was…The Disney Store!

My dad and Nick just groaned when they spotted it as I commented to Laura that I didn’t know actual Disney Stores still existed. She laughed, and the two of us headed inside, while Nick and dad found a spot to wait for the two of us.

The Dublin Disney Store isn’t huge, but it’s got three levels. We had fun exploring, laughing about how, with all of the, what I consider, St Patrick’s Day Mickeys on display, plus Halloween decorations (it is August and Disney after all!), it was like they were celebrating two holidays at once. After thoroughly exploring, I picked up a Dublin Disney t-shirt, because, while I didn’t love Dublin, this was a fitting one. And I knew I could still squeeze that and a reusable bag into my suitcase.

 
Shopping done, we continued on to our final Dublin destination, St Stephen’s Green. Along the way we passed a MASSIVE line…for Oasis tour merchandise. So many people. It really was wild. We continued walking, obviously.

St Stephen’s Green is a really beautiful park in the middle of Dublin. I think we all thoroughly enjoyed walking around here. No one even complained that it was MORE WALKING! It was worth the visit on this really nice day.

 
We then started walking back towards our hotel, stopping in a watch store for Nick to decide that the watch he’s been drooling over online for years actually isn’t right for him, for some more Cadbury Dairy chocolate bars for me to take home (they’ll fit in my purse, no suitcase space needed!), and Starbucks for Laura to “get a real coffee”.

We then finished the walk back to our hotel where we collected our luggage from storage and then hung out in the (small, but big enough for our crew) lobby for a bit. Dad even managed to get the front desk dude to charge his phone for him. He’d been borrowing Laura’s charging cable in the car all week and had been insistent (since we all had NUMEROUS chargers…and adapters) that he’d be fine for these two days in Dublin without his. He also finally admitted it wasn’t actually the charger he’d forgotten; he’d brought the wrong adapter. Again…we had extras!

Eventually we did the final luggage rearranging and bathroom visits. And then I asked the front desk guy how we would know when our taxi was there (we had pre-booked a taxi to the airport through the front desk). His response? Oh…he’ll be here in 6 minutes, I’m tracking him now. Well…that’s a good service.

Sure enough, 6 minutes later, our taxi driver walked in and greeted us by room number, and we headed outside. Despite the front desk guy promising to book us a van (and given the knowledge and old school hospitality this front desk guy had demonstrated towards a variety of guests while we’d been hanging out in the lobby, I do believe he DID), this was a sedan, but somehow, the driver got all the luggage in the trunk (minus backpacks that rode on laps), and we all piled in for the half hour drive back to the airport.

The drive was pretty uneventful and soon enough we arrived at Terminal 2 at Dublin Airport. Time to go home.

We paid up and headed for check in. Dad and Laura were able to check in at the business class desk. Nick and I tried the express check in, but apparently I’d missed one button doing online check in the day before, so we had to go to the lengthy real line. We were in line a solid 20 minutes, with me trying to determine the dialect of any screaming toddler to figure out if we’d be stuck with them on our flight, but eventually we had checked our luggage and we were on our way with boarding passes in hand.

We met back up with Laura and dad and headed upstairs to security. The first stop was Irish security, which really was very similar to American TSA. Because pre-check doesn’t work here, we did have to put our liquid baggies in a bin, and Nick’s shoes had to come off because they reached his ankles. All other shoes could stay on. We were through security within 10 minutes of entering the line. Then we cruised through Duty Free and headed for US Pre-Clearance.

This is where we made a mistake. Anything interesting to eat is BEFORE pre-clearance. After pre-clearance was really just stands with pre-made sandwiches, and the classic airport candy stands. But anyway…

We headed downstairs to Pre-Clearance. Ireland is unique in that it is the only European country where US-bound passengers clear customs before actually entering the United States. Both Dublin and Shannon airports offer this, and it makes it so that you arrive in the States effectively as a domestic passenger.

We were all prepared with our mobile passport control apps (that works here, when they open a line for it), but couldn’t even find a line for it. It wasn’t needed though; we were directed straight to passport checkers, and after two questions each (“are you bringing any fruit or meat into the country?” and “when did you leave the US?”), we were welcomed back to the United States and sent on our way. We didn’t even have to go through a US based TSA line. My understanding is experience here can vary in terms of what they put you through, but it’s always easier than landing in the States as an international passenger.

Officially back in the United States (but definitely not technically!), we headed in search of food and our gate. Nick and I had cheese paninis that they heated up for us, and that honestly were more like pizza…there was some sort of tomato pasty situation happening with the cheese. They were really good, especially for being pre-made sandwiches and made Nick a little less salty that we hadn’t realized all the “good” food options were pre US Pre-Clearance. He then took some time to find some more Irish candy and dad bought himself one more bottle of Irish whiskey.

Boarding began eventually and it was way more orderly than it had been leaving Boston. For one thing, we could actually hear the announcements! Nick and I were row 17 for this flight, so we boarded later in the process, but soon enough we were taking our customary “we don’t want to go home” picture as we settled in for the flight back to Boston.

 
The flight was good. No screaming toddlers, and decent movie and TV series offerings. We were fed pretzels and soda shortly after take off and then a bit later our dinner choices were mac and cheese or creamy chicken and rice. Nick and I both had mac and cheese, and the flavor was very good. My only complaint was there were onions in it. But they were big enough to pick around. Dinner came with soda bread, Kerrygold butter, some sort of bean salad situation, a lemon mousse and a water, as well as milk for the coffee and tea service that happened after dinner. About an hour and a half before landing, they came around with a pre-landing snack of an oatmeal bar and a “chicken caesar wrap” (chicken and sauce in a mini wrap). Service was excellent. The flight was very smooth too. Only one very brief patch of turbulence, which they announced beforehand (and locked the bathrooms for to keep people in their seats). And it was mild turbulence. I alternated between Gilmore Girls and the flight tracker before eventually buying a few hours of wifi and facebooking my way back into Boston airspace.

 
We landed in Boston a solid half hour early, which was awesome, so the flight took less than the scheduled 7ish hours. It was pretty interesting taxiing to the gate, since it was peak international flight departure hour. The line of departing planes was a combination of the giant international planes and the teeny props that fly from Boston to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.

Deplaning was pretty quick once we were back at the gate, and then after bathroom visits, we headed downstairs to get our luggage, relieved that we didn’t have to go through customs. While we knew Laura and dad’s business class luggage would emerge quickly, Nick and my suitcases also showed up surprisingly fast for how many people were on our flight. Luggage in hand, we followed the directions our driver had texted me and made our way over to the limo section of the parking garage. We found the driver, Kevin, easily enough, he loaded everything in the back of his big black SUV, and we were on our way back to NH.

The drive back was uneventful, and about an hour later we were back at dad’s, retrieving car keys and loading luggage in our respective cars and headed home.


Final thoughts:

Ireland is beautiful. We saw so much but there’s still so much I want to see there. I’ve got two more trips over in mind.

We really lucked out with weather.

Irish Cadbury Dairy chocolate is fantastic.

Dublin is unnecessary to visit, but that didn’t really surprise me. It met my expectations. It fell well short of my dad’s expectations.

The long flights weren’t as bad as I expected from a sitting still standpoint.

Aer Lingus had better airplane food than I expected, and really good in-flight service in general.

National has been very good to work with with regards to rental car damage. But next time I go to that country, I’m just going to pay the extra for their insurance, so I don’t have to deal with the process.

My sister was easier to travel with than I expected. My dad was not. But, for having not spent that much time with him since we drove across the country with him when I was in high school, it went better than I expected.

Driving on the opposite side isn’t so bad. The narrow, curvy roads, though are another story.

Roads starting with M or N are easiest to deal with. R is narrow but doable. L wouldn’t even qualify as a driveway here.

America needs European bottle tops.

European orange Fanta is better than American orange Fanta.

Rockshore is an excellent cider, but Orchard Thieves definitely won the cider contest. It’s too bad we can’t get either in the States.

Now that I’ve done one trip overseas, I’m ready for lots of trips overseas!

Phew, I finished this before my next scheduled trip!

August 2025: Our First Trip to Ireland: Day 8

Day 8: Saturday August 16, 2025

I was still awake fairly early this morning. Eventually we got up and got ready, and then met Dad and Laura downstairs for breakfast at Copper Alley Bistro.

Breakfast was good. I know I had pancakes with Irish bacon. I think we all enjoyed our food, although I was confused by how spicy the avocado mash that came with the pancakes was.

 
After breakfast, we headed back to the rooms to really get ready for the day. About 9:45, we met up downstairs and started the 13 minute walk to our first destination: Jameson. Jameson is on the north side of the River Liffey, and immediately after crossing the river, we understood why the advice is to stay south of the Liffey. At this hour, we didn’t feel unsafe, but we definitely felt safer South of the Liffey, and would not have been comfortable being out after dark North of the Liffey. I was glad I had NOT booked us at the Hampton Inn here (that we walked past), because although the hotel looked nice, the surroundings didn’t. Crossing the river was pretty though.

Now the main Jameson distillery is in Middleton, not Dublin, but they have a visitors center and small distillery here, so, with this crew, it was a necessary stop. We got there a few minutes before it opened, so we did some picture taking outside.

And then it opened…sort of. Turns out that while the website says that Jameson opens at 10, that’s really only for the first tour group. The shops and bar open at 10:30. So we did some picture taking inside and took advantage of the free wifi until the bar opened.

 
I’m sure Nick got some sort of old fashioned type drink. I got one of their cocktail specials, a Jameson Orange with lemonade, which we discovered is really more like lemon club soda. This was excellent (it’s on Nick’s agenda to re-create it at home!), and even Laura who cannot stand whiskey, got one after trying a sip of mine. I’m not sure what dad got to drink, but it definitely involved whiskey. There were more pictures taken and drinks were enjoyed. Slainte!

After consuming our drinks, we explored the gift shop, with the guys looking for anything distillery specific that was interesting (spoiler alert, they came up empty) and me doing some Christmas shopping for them.

Once we were done at Jameson, we started the 20ish mile walk back across the River Liffey and up a big hill to our next destination, the reason why everyone comes to Dublin, the Guinness Storehouse. There was much grumbling from the two that don’t Disney with me about the walking, but we all made it there unscathed.

It took us a little while to find the entrance to the Storehouse because the place is massive, but it also allowed for some picture taking along the way.

Once there, we were early, so we expected them to stick us in their holding pen outside, but they actually scanned our tickets and sent us right in. There was more scanning inside and we were handed multiple ticket things, before being sent on our way.

Now…our tickets… My dad is a regular at the local dive bar that’s just barely over the border into Manchester from my hometown. Bonsai has the best Chinese food in the area, great American food, cheap drinks, ridiculously large food serving sizes and is a total locals hangout. The regulars all know each other. Apparently one of the other regulars is a beverage distributor. He found out we were going to Ireland and snagged Dad free “VIP” (so he told dad) tickets to Guinness. We didn’t really care about the VIP tagline, we were just excited about the “free” part. I’d done some research when we got our hands on the tickets, and they were for the Stoutie experience, meaning we got the usual self-guided tour experience with a pint at the Gravity Bar at the top of the Storehouse, plus an additional pint halfway through the Storehouse with our faces printed on the head. Two pints per person plus the self guided tour, all for free. Not bad.

Our visit to the Storehouse started with a quick intro to the world of Guinness by a worker in kind of the center of the Storehouse. Then we were sent on our way to explore at our own pace. The Guinness Storehouse is massive, spanning multiple floors, supposedly built in the shape of a pint glass. The experience is pretty high tech, and very well done. We were here for several hours. There are a couple of restaurant areas halfway through, and we did get lunch. Nick and I shared a quattro formagi pizza, Laura had a margarita pizza, and dad had…food. The food was excellent. We got our faces on a pint at the Stoutie experience. And at the Gravity Bar, Nick and I tried our Guinness with black currant syrup. He’s someone who actually enjoys stouts. I’m less of a fan. But we both agreed that the black currant added a lot to the experience and totally changed the taste. We also enjoyed the views of Dublin from the Gravity Bar. 360 degree views from up here…I think 7 stories up. We enjoyed our time at the Guinness Storehouse, and we were very grateful for the free tickets!

The Guinness Storehouse was touristy, obviously, but I definitely understood why it’s a must-do in Dublin. While I recommend focusing on other parts of Ireland over Dublin, if you do spend time in Dublin, go to Guinness, whether you have to pay for the tickets or not.

When we finished at Guinness, we took about a 15 minute walk to Teeling Distillery. This stop was very much for dad. It had warmed up to about 72 degrees fahrenheit, so, there was, of course, much grumbling about the walking. Good grief! We took some pictures and did a quick pass through the store here, but ended up not staying long at Teeling. While air conditioning was really only truly good at the Guinness Storehouse and in the hotels we had stayed in, it was REALLY bad here, and their tasting room was on the second floor.

 
From Teeling, we started walking back towards the hotel, stopping to check out Fallons, a pub dad had wanted to go to, along the way. This turned out to be a VERY small pub, and apparently didn’t have the feel (you know…sitting at the bar) that dad wanted, so we looked in and then continued on our way, back to the hotel.

Back at the hotel, we took naps, started packing and then discovered that the reason Dublin was SO peopley this weekend was because the Oasis reunion tour was in town. They played two sold out shows at Croke Park, each with close to 90,000 people in attendance.

Naps taken, we met up with dad and Laura for dinner, across the street at Bull and Castle, where they’d eaten the night before. We sat upstairs at the bar (obviously), which has a more limited menu. I had a burger and my final Orchard Thieves cider of the trip. I think Laura also had a burger. Dad probably had a salad of some sort and Nick had a steak. And dad had all of his favorite prohibition era American cocktails. We were here for a couple of hours. The food was good and the bartender was outstanding. The company was questionable though;) Laura told me at one point that the trip was “about what she had expected”, which I’m pretty sure was not a compliment of my tour guide skills. I will say, though, that of Dad and Laura, she, oddly enough, had been the easier of the two to travel with. That was not what I’d been expecting.

After dinner, we went back to the hotel, where I know I crashed hard.