Planning a Trip

After all my years of travel I must have picked up a few tips and tricks along the way because I’m often designated as the organizer. As we plan our Ireland vacation I’ve been going through the various steps involved in organizing a family trip and this time around I figured I’d share some of the planning. There’s going to be 6 adults and a toddler on this trip of ours and we want to do as much as we can within the 12 day framework. I try to keep some flexibility but also know that there’s a need for some structure because dilly dallying in a large group is easy to do. Before you know it you’ve spent an extra hour in a hotel room instead of visiting the quaint little town!

 

FLIGHTS

Determining which city we fly into is always fun. Sometimes the options aren’t as easy because we fly into once city and then fly out of another. Ireland’s a good example where we could potentially have flown into a couple spots but we decided that Dublin was a good base for us and would allow us to spend time in a city at the start and the end of the trip.

The next decision is determining travel options. Flights are usually the norm for us, so a couple months out I start combing through various sites to see the deals out there. We’re not all inclusive people so there’s an additional step needed for flights and accommodations. Google’s new flight search is awesome because it shows you the prices right on the home page.. never mind the additional hotel rates that pop up. Definitely will make planning much easier moving forward. I monitor flight prices and jump on them the moment they go to a low. It’s hard to gage when the best time to buy tickets are but I have noticed a slight dip on Sundays and Wednesday. Might just be me imaging things though!

 

ROUTE

ireland mapWith flights and starting and ending cities crossed off the list (or atleast a ballpark of which flights I’d be looking to book on) I move on to figure out our game plan. Mapping out points of interests and using TripAdvisor to comb through highlights offered on the main city sites help me gage the best spots to visit. This portion can take me a couple of weeks as there’s so many opinions and factors to consider. I always try to ensure that there’s a good balance of history, culture, culinary delights and cheesy tourism spots in our mix. This time around I’ve also added good music and beer onto the list of spots to hit up. Another factor when choosing the cities is to determine if we’d be driving around, being chauffeured or flying between the spots. For Ireland I’ve proposed the following route and the group has kindly obliged.

Dublin to Blarney (pit stops in Kilkenny and Cashel)

2 nights in Blarney (with a pop over to Kinsale)

Blarney to Dingle (pit stop in Kilarney)

2 nights in Dingle

Dingle to Doolin (Aran Islands one day)

2 nights in Doolin

 

ACCOMMODATIONS

While it’s true that I often move things around a bit, for the most part the route once mapped out stays fairly consistent. I have on occasions reduced a day or taken off a spot if the time and money to get there was not ideal. Now that I know where we’ll be I comb through the TripAdvisor forums to see where I should be staying and between their rentals and VRBO I do my best to find apartments that will suit us. I find apartments to be cheaper and on family travels gives us the option to lounge around, do laundry and prep our own meals when in the mood. All these are huge pluses. In Dublin we’ll be in apartments but as we go into the smaller towns there’s a minimal requirement of a week to stay in the cottages so at this stage I’ve found some BnB options that may work for us. I rely heavily on reviews to point me in the right direction and this is one reason I always try to review spots I’ve travelled to. Keeping that site alive is a huge benefit for me! Doing a Google search also brings up hidden gems when it comes to apartments and I always email the places directly because you never know, many have a few days between clients and are willing to rent out for a couple days even though policy states they only do weekly rentals. I can easily spend a month trying to find the best accommodations and have on occasion booked these just a day before our travels!

 

With the basics covered, I then comb through Virtual Tourist to find the off the beaten path recos and read through travel forums to find places people have stumbled upon. At this stage I also look at what foodie spots I should be hitting and make a note of it on my tracker. We always have friends who have visited or have lived in some amazing places so I do rely on their tips as well. This way if we’re looking for a spot I have a list to fall back on. I do like leaving an element of surprise on our travels because discovering spots for ourselves is thrilling and stumbling along hidden alleys and chatting with locals have led us to some great hidden gems. In addition tourist boards have great websites and are a fantastic resource when travelling!

Did I mention that I track everything down and have details on contact numbers, email addresses and addresses of key points of contacts? I’m referring to accommodation hosts, drivers, any tour operators e.t.c. I’m good like that.

Here’s a small glimpse of what I have in the works for Ireland.

itinnn

Leave Your Comment

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.