The Younger Sisters' Five Week Journey Through Europe

We are free today to go wherever the road takes us. That is, as long as we are headed to Waterford and take the route I planned out in great detail. Today Jen and I picked up our rental car from the Dublin airport. Getting there was a little tricky but we managed. We road DART (Dublin area rapid transit) to the bus station and then took a shuttle to the airport. Here's another plug for packing light when traveling in Europe, especially if you are using multiple means of transportation, the less stuff you have the easier it is to get on and off the bus, subway, train, etc. Unfortunately, we had my wheel chair; which, even though it was light and compact when I wasn't using it, made it a little more difficult to get from one place to the next. When we got to the airport we picked up our rental car. Thankfully, Jen is both an expert at driving a stick and driving on the other side of the road (from living in Australia), so she did all the driving, and she did great! We reser...

In Dublin's fair city, where the girls are so pretty, I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone, as she wheeled her wheel-barrow, through streets broad and narrow, crying, "cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!""Alive, alive, oh,Alive, alive, oh," crying "cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh" After breakfast at Pauline's apartment (see previous post for more about our accommodations in Dublin) we walked down the street to hop on the Hop on Hop off bus and begin our adventure in Dublin's fair city. Our first stop was to find an SIM card for Jen's phone so that we could make calls if needed. Jen has an unlocked Iphone, which means you are able to buy SIM cards that work in each country. It took a couple of tries to find the right place that sold what we were looking for and we had to pay with cash, so then that took a little longer to find an ATM. Thankfully there was a Starbucks close to the ATM, which was needed, as jet leg sti...

What it’s 8am, what happened to the night time? We boarded our flight from Boston about 6 hours ago, and I think that I slept maybe an hour. But we are here, we are in Ireland; Dublin, Ireland. After we drowsily made our way through customs, and got our first passport stamp of the trip, we headed out to tourist information kiosk in Terminal 1. I had done my research and planned it so our accommodations were within walking distance from a Hop on Hop off bus stop; which would be our main source of transportation in Dublin. However, we had to get from the airport to the city center where the bus started its route. In my research I also found a pass, called the Dublin Pass, which got us entry into most of the major sites we were planning to see. This pass also included bus fare from the airport to the city center. Originally I had planned on getting the pass for one day. But after being awake for 20 hours I was easily persuaded by the lady selling the passes that a 2 day pass was wha...

Today was spent on airplanes and in airports. Our flight left San Francisco for Boston at 8:45am. A flight I had flown so many times over the last 11 years. However, this time Boston was only a layover and Dublin was our final destination, and this time I was not traveling solo as many times before, Jen was with me, and our journey was beginning. Our parents dropped us off at the airport and we said our goodbyes. I had decided when planning this trip that there may be a time along the way that my knee would stop cooperating and I didn't want that to keep us from seeing things, so I researched and found a transport wheelchair that was light weight and compact. The chair only weighed 19 lbs and fit into a small trunk space (compact rental cars in Europe are super compact). The chair was tricky sometimes, I didn't end up needing it as much as I thought, which was good, but it also was a pain to transport especially getting on trains with it. But I ended up really needing it whe...