August 2025: Our First Trip to Ireland: Day 2

Day 2 (ish): Sunday August 10, 2025

After a night of good sleep, I was awake by 7 local time. I enjoyed how much more peaceful our views were this morning before the tour buses started rolling in.

And then we got ready for the day and headed down to breakfast. Breakfast was included in the stay here. When we got to the dining room, we were given menus for hot items and directed to a small buffet line for toast, fruit, yogurt, cereal and juices. I think Dad and I ordered pancakes and Laura and Nick ordered the mini Irish breakfast (so lots of meat). And then we helped ourselves to the continental buffet while we waited.

The food was good, service was decent and breakfast was pretty efficient. We then headed upstairs to finish rounding up luggage. Nick and I then met dad down at the car with our luggage, which we loaded in the car before heading over to Laura’s room.

Dad and I had both booked seaview rooms. Laura had outsmarted us and booked a terrace room. So after hearing all about it, we went to check it out. While her view wasn’t great during tour bus hours, she did have a really nice outdoor space, and a pretty nice view after the tour buses left. And by stepping over the low wall that separated her terrace from the walkway, we could get her monstrosity of a suitcase down to the car with significantly less stairs. So, that’s exactly what we did, after spending a few minutes enjoying the views.

Once all the luggage was loaded in the car, we officially checked out. Nick and I were both in agreement that we would stay at the Causeway Hotel again in a heartbeat. I didn’t actually ask Laura and Dad’s opinions but they didn’t seem to be complaining about the accommodations, so that’s a win.

We left the hotel just as the first tour buses were rolling in, so things were still relatively calm, and it was easy enough to get out of the parking lot and back out to the “main road”. It was a quick drive to our next stop, Dunluce Castle, which is castle ruins on a cliff, where we found the last remaining parking spot in the tiny lot. Here, based on group decision (which had included dad saying “I saw plenty of castles in Germany, so I don’t need to go IN any castles”...oh boy…), we did not go within the walls of the castle, so we didn’t have to pay. We just walked around outside the walls. There were some decent views, and it’s wild to think about what relatively good condition these ruins are in, for something that was constructed in the 13th century. And yes, this was one of the Game of Thrones filming locations.

From here, we drove a couple more minutes down the coast to the Magheracross Viewpoint. Here we easily found parking in a decent sized carpark. And we found some incredible views of the Northern Ireland coastline. We could even see Dunluce Castle.

Once we’d gotten our fill of picture taking, we climbed back in the car to work our way towards our next destination. This next leg of the trip took a little over an hour and led us over quite the variety of roads, through little towns and up over mountains. It was a beautiful (and, at times white knuckle) drive to our next destination, in the Sperrins.

 

So what exactly was our next destination? It was Nowanois, a Thomas Dambo troll. Thomas Dambo is an artist from Denmark that travels the world constructing giant trolls out of trash wood: scraps, old pallets, etc. Nick and I have seen his trolls in Maine and Kentucky. We hope to see his trolls in Rhode Island and one in Michigan over the next year. So we wanted to add one of the 3 he has in Northern Ireland to the list. The other two require a decent walk/hike. But Nowanois is just a few minutes from the parking lot. So, although it meant not visiting some other places that would have been nice to see, it was a logical stop.

We enjoyed the views of the mountains and countryside as we walked up to the troll. When we got to the troll, we discovered a very red-faced couple emerging from behind the troll, hence the random shoe on the troll. None of us could quite figure out why a shoe needed to be removed…or placed on the troll. Also…woodchips. YEEOWCH. Anyway, Nick and I saw another Thomas Dambo troll, and Laura and Dad saw their first.

 Troll seen, and the boys having experienced a flushing (and clean!) porta potty in the parking lot (very exciting! Very Not American!), we continued on to Donegal Town. Thankfully the roads leading there were increasingly less rural, but not uncomfortably so.

When we got into Donegal Town, it was easy enough to find The Abbey Hotel. Unfortunately, the tour buses had also found The Abbey Hotel, so there was no space to pull up in front of the hotel. So, we headed for the parking lot…err…car park…down the street. This was a bit of an adventure, because Nick was sure he saw closer parking on the map on the GPS (tied to Google Maps) in the car, but it actually was more like a service road with no exit, so I had to back up quite a distance, down this dinky little service road…in an XC90, which is just not made for driving in Ireland. But…we found a parking space and also found that because it was Sunday, we did not need to pay to park. Yay!

Since it was before official check-in time, we left the luggage in the car and headed up to the hotel. Sure enough, we were “a wee bit early for check in”. She said, though, that our rooms should be ready in about half an hour. So, we headed across the street for our first Irish pub experience at McAfferty’s. It was a hit. We all enjoyed this pub…both the atmosphere, and the selection. And Laura, Nick and I all decided we really liked Rockshore Cider, which turns out is made by Guinness, and, unfortunately, not available in the States. Dad had Irish whiskeys, and Nick probably had at least one whiskey here too.

 
After enjoying McAfferty’s, it was late enough that we headed back to the car to get the luggage, and then rolled it up the street to the hotel. Check in was quickly completed, and after agreeing on a time to meet, we headed upstairs (thankfully via the “lift”) to find our rooms.

I think Nick and I were in room 310. Dad was on the second floor and Laura was on the 1st (which was one above the lobby). We settled in for a few minutes (aka took pictures of the room and found jackets).

After briefly settling in, we headed back out. It was time for FOOD! We made the short walk over to the Olde Castle Seafood Bar. We grabbed seats at the bar, because my dad is a savage who can’t handle eating at a table (no really…his biggest complaint about Ireland other than the amount of time spent in the car was the lack of seats at the bar…). The bartender greeted us quickly, and he was awesome. Kinda snarky and really on top of things. We got drinks, perused the menu, and felt like we were at home when we started noticing a bunch of first responder patches from NH (we were not aiming for that!). And then we ordered food.

The experience here was excellent. Service was great and so was the food (and drinks). I had another Rockshore cider and the (massive) fish and chips. Laura had a burger, Nick had a pulled pork open faced sandwich and dad had a salmon salad. Dad, ever the critic, liked his meal enough to post pictures on facebook. Phew, I did well!

It started raining (I mean…we ARE in Ireland) while we were eating. When we finished eating, we took a few pictures as we worked our way back to the hotel (which was very close by. On our way to the hotel, we went to the bar at the hotel next door, the Central Hotel. We had a round of drinks and learned about the Irish sport of camogie, since that was on the TVs in the bar. Galway was facing off against another fairly nearby city in the finals. It was an intense sport.

 
After drinks here, Nick went to get some waters and Irish candy from the nearby convenience store and dad and I wandered into the bar at the Abbey Hotel to listen to music for a few minutes. Irish drinking songs in a bar. Now this is what I came to Ireland for!

When the band wrapped up their set, we all headed upstairs. Nick and I tried some Irish Cadbury Dairy, which was amazing, and then after showers in a shower that was actually easy to step into, crashed for the night.

August 2025: Our First Trip to Ireland: Day 1

Day 1: Friday August 8, 2025 and Saturday August 9, 2025

It’s travel day! When Gizmo got me up at 5:30 am, I very intentionally stayed awake, hoping this would help me sleep on the flight tonight. Sleeping on flights is NOT a strength of mine, but the flight was at 9:30 pm, which is basically past my bedtime. So maybe? Hopefully… I’ll be doing the driving when we arrive in Ireland.

Nick headed off to work and I dropped off some Amazon returns, did last minute trip prep around the house, went out for lunch with a friend and then packed up the dogs and brought them to my in-laws’. Kim and John were (bless them) taking care of the dogs for a week, before dropping them off at the kennel for the final weekend, so they could go to Connecticut for their class reunion.

Dogs dropped off, I headed for dad’s, where I was the final person to arrive. We stashed car keys and monitored the car service with the tracking link that I’d been sent. Our driver showed up promptly at 5:00, 15 minutes before the time I’d booked, just as expected. Pro-tip…if booking with Axis Car Service in NH, book a time that is 15 minutes after you want pickup, so that they’re not showing up earlier than you want. The driver, Mike, showed up in a big old Chevy SUV (Suburban?). He loaded up our luggage, we piled in, and it was off to Boston!

It was a surprisingly traffic-free ride into the city. Mike chatted with us and got us to the airport unscathed, about 6 pm. We headed inside from the curb where he dropped us off, and had essentially no wait to check in at Aer Lingus. Check in was easy enough, and pretty soon we were headed for the pre-check line. Aer Lingus DOES now participate in pre-check when you’re leaving the States, but you might have to call them to add your information to your reservation. That was the other thing I did when I called to select seats.

Pre-check had basically no line, and was reasonably uneventful, although my dad, who is actually very well-traveled, looked…not well traveled…tackling security. But…we made it through, and then after a bit of debate, chose a lounge to visit. Dad and Laura had lounge access with their business class seats, and both dad and I have Priority Pass through various cards, so we had plenty of lounge eligibility among us.

In Boston, most international flights go out of terminal B or E. But Aer Lingus uses the same gates as JetBlue which basically owns terminal C. So most lounges are in terminal B, which connects to terminal C. There’s one in terminal C. In the end, we chose that one since it was very close to our gate. And, honestly, regretted it. We got our free drinks and some random light foods but we weren’t really impressed. We all hung out for a bit.

 
And then Nick and I ditched dad and Laura who stayed in the lounge longer, to find some food of actual substance. Turns out Nick hadn’t really eaten all day, because of weird schedules at work. So, we went to the pseudo food court area and got bagels. These tasted good.

Eventually we headed back closer to the gate area which was completely mobbed. The Aer Lingus trans-Atlantic jets are a LOT bigger than the jets that JetBlue flies, so the passengers for our basically full flight had taken over about 3 gate areas. Nick and I found seats along the wall near the lounge Dad and Laura were in and they actually emerged a few minutes later. We all hung out a bit longer, and then dad and Laura headed for the gate, since they got to board first.

Once boarding really began, Nick and I headed for the gate, which was just a wall of unorganized humanity. No one could actually hear the boarding announcements, so everyone basically just made their own rules. We boarded eventually and easily found our seats, 11 A and C, window and aisle on the jetbridge side of this 2-4-2 configuration aircraft.

At our seats we found wired earbud style headphones, pillows, and fleece blankets. We settled in as best as we could, and got ready to fly.

The flight pushed back a few minutes early, and pretty soon we were airborne. By 10 pm they were serving dinner (why?), with choices of cheese tortellini or chicken. I had the tortellini and it actually was decent. So was the cheesecake mousse served with it for dessert.

After dinner, I tried to get some sleep. Unfortunately, this is where things really went south. Just across the aisle were some toddlers. They weren’t traveling together, but they took turns screaming for basically the rest of the flight. I felt for them (and their parents). They were totally inconsolable, so I assume they were screaming out of exhaustion. But it was miserable. One would settle down and the other would start up. Over and over again…for hours. Nick is positive that I did at least sleep a little, but it sure didn’t feel like it. He didn’t sleep at all. To be fair, though, the professional sleeper in all moving forms of transportation had had Starbucks before the flight.

About the same time the kiddos both paused their screaming, the flight attendants started coming around with “breakfast snacks”. Blueberry (I think…it was dark) muffins and orange juice for everyone. By now, there was about an hour and a half left until landing, so, that was the end of any attempt at sleep. This was probably about 1:30 am body time.

We landed in Dublin about 8:15 am local time, which was 3:15 am to our bodies. Deplaning from row 11 (about the 3rd row in economy) was quick, and we found Laura and dad soon after. While bathroom trips were made, we all got connected to the airport wifi. And then we headed for customs.

A lot of flights had come in at once, so the customs line was LONG. It probably took 45 minutes to clear customs. When Nick and I got to the agent, said customs agent asked Nick the requisite questions: “how long are you staying and where are you going?”. Nick looked to me, and I answered, rattling off the very simplified itinerary. The customs agent was like “is this with an organized tour group?”. No sir, I planned this myself. The customs agent then looked at Nick with a smirk and a chuckle as he stamped our passports (my first passport stamp!) and said “and you’re just along for the ride huh”. Yeah, pretty much.

Customs cleared, we walked…not far at all, and found our suitcases on the baggage carousel. All were there, and we had them all in hand within minutes. And then it was off to the rental car counter.

Emerging into the arrivals hall made it clear just how big an airport DUB really is. But, we found our way to the National rental car counter easily enough. Here, the process was quick enough, but then I was sent to wait for a few minutes “while the car is brought over”. As a credit card perk, I have some semblance of status with National, so they were apparently supposed to be putting me in a car in the attached garage, rather than putting me on a shuttle to the rental car facility.

After…more than a few minutes of waiting…I headed back to the desk, where the associate quickly got on the phone. Turns out the assigned car had been brought to the wrong terminal. So she and one of the other associates quickly reassigned me with an upgrade to a Volvo XC90. We had rented a 7 passenger automatic SUV, but this was a higher level category. We were then directed down to level zero of the garage, and a specific space number where the car was parked.

We found the car easily enough, a plug in hybrid Volvo XC90, in the far corner of the garage. We loaded it up, I climbed into the right side driver’s seat, we programmed the GPS, and we were off to northern Ireland!

Other than not really knowing where the passenger side of that vehicle was, and therefore hitting lots of rumble strips on the motorway, it was an uneventful, roughly 3 hour drive to our destination. Even the roundabouts weren’t bad…well, the real ones anyway. I just followed traffic. The little roundabouts that didn’t actually look like roundabouts were more of an adventure. The other 3 took turns sleeping, while I drove. Laura was kind enough to somehow make sure someone was always awake while I was driving.

Under the direction of dad, who is used to staying in bigger hotels, we headed straight to our hotel, the Causeway Hotel, even though we were quite early for check-in. The approach to the hotel was chaotic, because it is right next to the Giant’s Causeway visitor center. However, there was a small army of people directing traffic and pretty soon we were parked and headed inside, where, sure enough, we were told we were “a wee bit early”. But they did check to see if any of the rooms were ready. They weren’t, but we were able to do the bulk of the check in process and use the restroom before we headed back out.

From here we made the 10 minute drive to Bushmills, the world’s oldest whiskey distillery. This place reminded Nick and me a lot of Buffalo Trace in Kentucky. It took a few minutes, but we found the bar and gift shop, which were the priorities (“we know how whiskey is made, we don’t need a tour”). While Laura and I found seats, dad and Nick got set up with a tasting flight. I think they enjoyed their tasting, particularly knowing that it was only 9 am at home. After they had tasted their flight, it was off to the gift shop, where Dad and Nick each got a bottle of whiskey with a personalized label to show that it had been purchased on our “Ireland trip 2025”.

By now it was late enough to try hotel check in again, so we headed back to Giant’s Causeway. We were once again impressed by the traffic direction taking place here, and pretty soon we were parked and headed inside. Check in was completed very efficiently, and after getting our luggage, we headed upstairs to our rooms. Nick and I were in room 7.

We settled in, changed into warmer clothes, and then met dad and Laura downstairs. It was time to visit the whole reason I’d included Northern Ireland in this itinerary: The Giant’s Causeway.

Staying at Causeway Hotel actually gave us free admission to Giant’s Causeway, and either a free guided tour or free audio self tour. We picked up our wristbands and audio tour sets at the visitor center, and headed back outside.

Giant’s causeway is basically a giant nature-made pile of hexagon shaped rocks. It's quite a walk down to this, but it is beautiful. Honestly, the hexagon rocks were cool, but the cliffs were even cooler. We were pretty blown away by the scenery (and maybe literally by the wind).

 
Once we’d gotten our fill of the scenery, we headed back to the visitor center where we returned the (mostly unused) audio tour sets and did a little shopping in the gift shop. Then it was back to the hotel rooms to ditch jackets before we met for dinner.

We had planned to just eat at the hotel bar, but when we came downstairs the woman who had initially checked us in (who I think was a manager) seated us in the dining room, and told us she’d make sure Laura (who showed up after the rest of us) found us. She clearly remembered us, right down to the detail that we’d landed in Dublin early this morning. This woman was a class act. Truly.

Dinner was surprisingly good. Dad had salmon, I had a chicken sandwich, Laura had chicken and mashed potatoes. Nick had…something with fries (sorry…chips). We all enjoyed our food, and our beverages. Service was a bit lacking once we were turned over to the dining room staff. But…we got fed and didn’t have to drive anywhere.

Once we’d finished eating, we headed back to our rooms after agreeing on a time to meet for breakfast in the morning. Nick fell asleep almost immediately. I did some texting and eventually decided I was too wide awake to go to bed yet. So, I headed back outside to walk some of the trails up above the Causeway and alongside the hotel. It was cold and windy, but it was a beautiful evening, and we were in an absolutely beautiful location!

After walking for a bit, I headed back to the room, where I finally settled down enough to get some sleep. When I actually crashed, I crashed hard, and slept well.

August 2025: Our First Trip to Ireland: Pretrip

Pre-trip

Cast of Characters
Me: 38, a school SLP, Disney nerd, collector (and user) of travel points, creator of torturous trip itineraries
Nick: also 38, hubby, Ford commercial sales guy, professional passenger prince
Laura: 34, my sister, shopaholic, dreams of spending a week on a tropical beach, works for a company that manages airport restaurants
Dad: 70, engineer who (still) designs, manufactures and installs waste water treatment systems primarily for large corporations…Exxon, Chevron, Smithfield pork, Perdue, Waste Management…yeah, he’s cleaning up their processing waste one giant black pipe and aerator at a time. He’s dad to Laura and me

Y’all may have noticed this is not the usual crew I travel with. You would be correct. For…many years…dad has been talking about wanting to do a family trip to Ireland. But…it’s always been just that…talk. A couple years ago, as Nick and I were mapping out the trip line up so that I could make sure I had the right travel points in the right place at the right time, we decided that with dad then approaching his 70th birthday, that we should probably just schedule a trip to Ireland, book plane tickets, and tell dad and Laura when we were going, with the hope that one or both of them would also book the same flights. We did prep them both that we were planning to go to Ireland in August of 2025, so it was on their radars. And then, in October 2024, with a really nice points transfer bonus from Chase to Aer Lingus, I booked flights for Nick and me and then sent the flight itinerary to dad and Laura, who, surprisingly, both also booked plane tickets.

From here, I started putting together an itinerary and sending it out for feedback. Feedback was limited and slow to roll in. Coordinating time to plan this trip was like pulling teeth. Finally in like May, I completely took over, complete with telling dad and Laura exactly what hotels to book when, because…we’re getting a little close to the deadline here. Thankfully, they responded by immediately booking the chosen hotels, so that was a win.

Hotels got booked. Car service got booked. I researched travel pillows for short people and bought the small SNUGL. I finalized itineraries. Laura snagged a great deal to upgrade and join dad up in business class. I spent some time on the phone with Aer Lingus to select seats ahead of the flight (points bookings get seats assigned at check-in, but you can call and select seats earlier. I waited too long and had to pay to upgrade to seats at the front of the plane, but honestly…this was a good thing). Adapters and purse size umbrellas were purchased. UK ETAs were obtained, with much picture taking frustration and eye rolling. Weather forecasts got stalked. Apps for Mobile Passport control, Irish weather, and Aer Lingus got downloaded. I booked tickets to the Irish Whiskey Museum in Dublin. I stressed about whether everyone would be happy with the chosen hotels, knowing full well that choices were limited by the time we booked. Some beverage distributor that frequents the same local dive bar as dad got us tickets to Guinness in Dublin for free. Summer program ended and packing commenced. Final decisions about rental car size were made. And pretty soon, it was time for Laura and my first trip overseas!