Wowee wow! What a blast we had on our first family vacation! We got to see and do so many amazing things, it really is hard to summarize our trip! But I will try to share some highlights for you all. I’ve waited WAY too long in sharing our adventure with you, but we did actually go 😉 Although now it seems like a lifetime ago, we will always cherish the memories we made while on this trip.
DAY 1
We left midday on a Friday to head to Chicago where we would board our international flight. Collins slept pretty much the entirety of the 2 hour flight, making her first plane ride uneventful, which = perfect for the parents! 😉 Nap time hit simultaneously with takeoff and she slept across our laps in the tiny little plane.
Chillin’ between Daddy’s legs before passing out
Waiting for our first plane ride!
Collins on her first plane!
We had a 4 hour layover before our long haul flight to Dublin, so we took Collins to the children’s play area in the O’Hare airport to blow off some energy. She loved this place!
We boarded our plane just before 7 PM (after arguing with the gate attendants about our seats to ensure we got a bassinet for Collins to sleep in), and I knew if we could distract her on this flight for about 2 hours, we could then get her to lay down for bed and hopefully the rest of the flight would be smooth sailing (flying?). That is exactly what happened! She was very good while awake on the plane. She did try to make a run down the aisle a couple of times, but really it didn’t take long at all until I changed her, put her in her pajamas, and gave her some Benadryl to help her sleep. The worst part of the flight was that I wasn’t feeling well at all (headaches and nausea). So it made distracting her a bit harder than normal. Once I slept and woke up for the morning I felt much better. Collins slept until we landed in Dublin! About 5.5 hours! 🙂 Mom and Dad got about 4 hours.
DAY 2
We have arrived in Dublin! Back home it is 2 AM and here it is 8 AM. We stay up until 10 PM Ireland time on our 4 hours of sleep. Whew! But we got to see several things in Dublin while we were walking zombies! 😉 St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Christ Church, and Trinity College. As well as enjoying a tasty lunch at one of Hannah’s favorite cafes – The Queen of Tarts. I had a divine quiche and everyone else enjoyed some sandwiches along with our spongecake we ordered for dessert! (FYI – I did a terrible job documenting our food during this trip – we ate everything so fast, but it all looked as amazing as it tasted!)
DAY 3
We intended to wake up early enough for church since this was now Sunday, but all of us overslept. Even Hannah and Kyle who are usually early risers! We headed straight for Malahide Castle instead.
After arriving at the castle, both of the babes were sleeping, and since Hannah and Kyle had visited before, they let Codee and I go on the tour by ourselves to see the inside of the castle (no photos allowed). Afterwards we ate lunch at AVOCA Café which is on the castle grounds. It was delicious!
Then we enjoyed a walk through the castle gardens. The gardens were gorgeous and had several old greenhouses – it sprinkled on and off on us, but overall the weather was great! We did get rather wet trekking back to the train station though. It was supposed to stop raining at 4pm… 😉
I wonder how old that massive tree is – yes that’s us in the wee distance, posing for scale.
We went out for dinner together where the babies were really tired and ready for bed. The men took them home after our meal, and Hannah and I ran to the store to stock up with snacks for our next couple of days on the road!
Day 4
No sleeping in today, we had to go pick up the rental car by 8 AM! Codee managed to drive through central Dublin to reach Hannah & Kyle’s home and load everything up for our road trip. I was only tense the entire ride there. 😉 As I felt like I was sitting on the drivers side I kept slamming on my imaginary breaks as we drove through town. Codee eventually got used to the car, but some of the traffic laws still remain a mystery to us…
First stop on our road trip was Glendalough. A centuries old monastery and tower reside here in the Wicklow National Forrest. After exploring the grounds we had a picnic nearby and then continued on our merry way.
We made a quick stop in Cobh to visit a church I wanted to see. It was practically on the water! We loved the charm of this little seaside town and wished we had more time to explore, but we needed to find dinner and head towards our lodging for the night before it got too dark.
We grabbed a quick bite in a pub (enjoying my first dish of fish and chips abroad!) in Cork and slowly but surely found our way to our first Airbnb. It was about 20 minutes outside of Cork in a very remote location. It was absolutely darling! And perfect for the 5 of us as we explored Cork County.
DAY 5
We packed the car, the food, and the babies for the day and headed to Blarney! Hannah had never visited and enjoyed the castle and grounds just as much as we did! The castle had a lot of rich history that we learned about via plaques along the walk throughout the castle/grounds. We stood in line to go to the top of the castle and kiss the blarney stone as well – I’ve got the “gift of gab” now! Hannah and Codee both had babies strapped to them so they weren’t able to lay down to kiss the stone – guess they will have to go back! 😉
We spent the rest of the day in Cork City, where we went to Trinity Church, St. Finbarr’s Cathedral, and found a lovely park for the kids to play at before checking out Daly’s Bridge (Shaky Bridge) and heading home for the evening.
I love love love this photo of Collins & Augustine. These precious babes were so good the entire trip! And played great together 🙂 Collins looks so little in this picture compared to now!! [Taken at our Airbnb in Cork]
DAY 6
This morning was hectic as we sped to the train station to put Hannah and Augustine on a train back to Dublin. After that, Codee, Collins, and I continued our way down the eastern coast and along the Wild Atlantic Way. These next two days were probably my favorite in Ireland. We spent quite a bit of time in the car, but got to see SO much along the way. And all of it was breathtaking and gorgeous. Our first stop was at Charles Fort. We arrived before they even opened and ending up having the entire fort to ourselves as we toured and explored the old military grounds.
Some photos along the Wild Atlantic Way…(Click to enlarge! The scenery along our drive was the best we saw in all of Ireland!)
I’ve shared this on my instagram as well, but this really is my favorite photo we took abroad. Love this man! We didn’t stop very much between our planned visited landmarks, but as we got closer to the coast along our drive, we had to pull over and capture the memory!
We eventually made it to the most southern tip of Ireland – Mizen Head. This was our favorite landmark we visited in Ireland. It was BEAUTIFUL, so breathtaking, and had a fun little museum in the lighthouse at the end of the trail. We took a hike down to the lighthouse, crossing a massive bridge along the way that had an incredible view down into the Atlantic Ocean. We even saw some seals swimming down below! You couldn’t take a bad picture here, and the weather was perfect!
We were headed to Killarney for the night which is in Killarney National Forrest. We got to follow along the Wild Atlantic Way on our drive there, so again, the sites were beautiful. At this point in the day it was nearing the dinner hour and as it was my BIRTHDAY (woohoo!) we wanted to reach our hotel before it got dark so that we could find a nice place to eat and celebrate. In our time crunch we did cut out a couple little sites on our way to Killarney, but Charles Fort and Mizen Head were so amazing I didn’t even care. Dinner was lovely and we enjoyed gelato afterwards (Below – Collins is enjoying her free cone, we were going to share ours with her but the lady at the counter insisted on giving her her own 😉 ). It was a great birthday, I will never forget turning 24 in Ireland!
DAY 7
We woke up to a full breakfast at our little B & B. Codee ordered the full Irish breakfast, and I enjoyed a tasty omelet. With lots of croissants and jam of course! We also reignited our love of hot tea (something we’ve enjoyed in the past) on this trip. Sipping it nearly every morning and in the afternoon as well!
After breakfast we packed the car to head onwards and enjoy our full day of sightseeing. We took a walk (Codee would say a long trek), through the National Forrest to see the Gap of Dunloe before leaving Killarney. We absolutely loved Killarney’s charm – I would definitely return to enjoy it some more!
There was a cottage store outside of the National Park – Collins taking in the bar scene there
After the Gap of Dunloe we drove towards the Cliffs of Moher. Even in the freezing rain we had a good time taking in the view of the massive cliffs and eerie looking waters. We ventured in and out of the visitors center several times to view the cliffs so that we wouldn’t drag Collins in the cold, wet wind for an unreasonable amount of time. We guessed that the weather was wet and windy in this part of the country on pretty much a daily basis, being on the coast – so the rain in no way put a damper on our day. Made us feel like we were really in Ireland! Although I did have to give in and where a Nebraska hat…bleh. 😉
The last part of the day we backtracked a bit to reach Bunratty and enjoy an authentic Castle Banquet, complete with musical entertainment and of course plenty to eat! I didn’t get a photo of all of our dishes, but the meal consisted of vegetable soup, ribs, chicken and vegetables, and an absolutely amazing fruit-filled cheesecake. This was one of the quirky tourist attractions that we took part in, but it really was a great evening! The staff were all very helpful with Collins throughout the meal which made the night even more enjoyable.
DAY 8
Our last day in Ireland. We stayed near Galway after our evening banquet in Bunratty, putting us about an hour away from our ferry ride that would take us out to Aran Islands. I was really looking forward to this little day trip, but it ended up being our most miserable day! I swear to you we laughed more on this day because of all the struggles we encountered though. It was laughably horrible. Which helped with the suckiness of it.
So we get off of the ferry and go rent bikes. I am thinking “oh we are gonna have such fun just riding bikes around this cute little island.” I wanted to see the seal colony, the island fort, and the cliff diving site. Well, a couple of things made that harder than I had planned. 1. The map we were given was terrible. It did not show all the roads and we had no idea where we were going. 2. Once we made about 3 zig-zaggy laps around the (entire) town and finally figured out which road to take to the seal colony, our legs were already tired. I swear to you we rode for miles and miles up hill BOTH ways. We got lost. It rained on us. There were no seals. The fort was the highest point of the island so we didn’t have to time tour it – a supposedly 30 minunte bike ride took us 2.5 hours. And we were never able to find the cliff diving site for the lack of signage on this tiny, deserted (like really, we saw about 3 people on this entire trek) island. We kept surprisingly light-hearted attitudes about the whole situation though. It really was so bad it was laughable. So that’s about all we did on the island. Bike and laugh and wonder why everything was uphill.
We were exhausted, soaked through with rain, and very sore by the time we made it back to the mainland. After changing into dry clothes we drove back to Dublin that night to stay at Hannah and Kyle’s home again. We were glad to be going to England the next day with them!
Ireland was absolutely amazing and even better than I thought it would be. I am so happy we got the opportunity to explore this country as a little family and enjoy some real quality time together. Spending time with Hannah, Kyle, & Augustine really was there cherry on top though 🙂
Leading up to our trip I was most looking forward to escaping our busy everyday life and just being able to enjoy time together. Now, following the vacation, I realize again how great and needed that time together was. No, we didn’t have to spend thousands to travel somewhere and spend time with each other, but being away – from work, school, family – really was exactly what we needed. As I dream about all that free time, beautiful scenery, and extended conversations we shared, it helps me get through our day-to-day crazy schedule and look forward to the next chance we get to make special memories as a family.
Well, that was IRELAND! I’ll share about ENGLAND soon! 🙂
Thanks for reading!
Lots of Love,
Katie
wildly widler 