Off we go again, this time for two weeks in Ireland and this time with a traveling companion: Judy’s cousin, Nancy Kennedy. She’ll keep us on the straight and narrow (well, hopefully not too straight not too narrow). And with a surname like Kennedy in Ireland, she should be good for a few free rounds of Guinness at the pubs we frequent.
One sad note about this trip is that Nancy’s late husband Bill won’t be with us. As a true Irish descendent he always wanted to do a trip like this and with Bill along a round of golf or two would have been on the itinerary. This trip reminds us of the time 50 or more years ago when the four of us toured Quebec City. Lots of laughs and good times to remember then and since.
Speaking of Bill’s Irish ancestors, a quick search leads me to believe that on his father’s side, Stephen James Kennedy, born 1810 in Bantry, County Cork and his wife, Mary Ann Coppinger born 1819 were Bill’s great-great grandparents. On his mother’s side, Bridget Dolan (b 1835) and John Kilroy (b 1834) were great-great grandparents. Bill had 82 first cousins, so he’s probably related to half of Ireland one way or another.
We have only one Hempstead, Rick or for that matter Hemman relative that we know of, so we won’t be stumbling around graveyards looking for our long-ago relatives.
Another difference this time is that we’ve hired a driver for 11 of our 14 days. He/she will serve as a driver, tour guide and culinary guide as well. The roads are narrow, they drive on the left and while we did sorta OK in England last June, this should reduce the stress and uncertainty of the trip considerably and add local knowledge you don’t get from Rick Steves’ tour guidebook.
Here’s a map of the trip and the spreadsheet schedule. The little side diversions are just that: day trips to see the nearby sights. We’ll stay in seven hotels with only a single one-night stand.
If you received this email, you will get an email notification every time I post, usually once a day. If you’d rather not have your inbox cluttered with announcements, let me know and I’ll drop you from the automatic list. No hard feelings (that I won’t get over eventually). You can always go to jonandjudy.com for the latest updates and postings from our earlier trips.
Our flight arrives DublinFriday at 10:45 AM. We’re scheduled for a four-hour “pub crawl” at 6 PM. We’ll see how the first night’s blog posting goes.
Thanks for coming along with us. We love the company!
