Hello, my friends! I am back from my lovely Ireland “holiday” (as they say there, hehe) and it was filled with so many highlights. I could have spent another two weeks exploring the country, as there were so many places we missed like the Dingle Peninsula, Belfast, the Aran Islands, Cork, etc. It just means we need to make a trip back to Ireland someday, right?
I’ll be diving into trip recaps later this week, but before I do that, I thought it might be good to talk about some of the things I learned during my first international vacation:
1) Give me smaller countryside towns over busy cities.
My friend Amber told me that she much preferred the smaller Ireland towns over the big cities during her trip to Ireland a few years ago… and I kind of ignored her advice. (Oops!) But it’s good advice, especially for me since I get very overstimulated and overwhelmed easily by loud, chaotic environments. Like Dublin. With more than half a million in population, not to mention all the tourists (especially worse on Saturday as there was a cruise ship in port), it’s a very crowded city. I had some fairly epic meltdowns while we were in Dublin. Sometimes, it was because I got hangry and we couldn’t find a place to eat that had an empty table. Other times, it was because I got us lost on our way to a pub or museum even though I was using my phone’s GPS. I didn’t feel this way at all while we were in Galway or Kilkenny, which just means I’m not into the big city life. I’m glad I visited Dublin, but two days were more than enough for me.
2) Give me trains over cars.
So, here’s the truth: I didn’t drive in Ireland. While everyone I talked to about driving on the other side of the road told me it was easier than it looked, I was anxious about it. My anxiety ramped up when I arrived in Ireland and saw the driving IRL. It looked complicated and the drivers were more impatient than I expected (lots of honking!), so I made the decision to cancel our car reservation and take the train wherever we needed to go. It was the right call and I really enjoyed traveling by train! Although, I did make the expensive mistake of not getting off the train at a connection point on our way to Kilkenny. So, instead of getting off the train in Kildare to take another train into Kilkenny, we went all the way back to Dublin and had to buy another ticket (for a cool 56 euros) to Kilkenny from Dublin. Read the ticket email, Steph! Argh.
3) I get super stressed out when plans change.
I love itineraries and on this trip, I took the lead on planning our itinerary, checking in with my mom every few weeks to review it. And it was fun! I really, really enjoyed all of the planning – finding out what cities to visit, what places to see, what restaurants to eat at, etc.
And when our trip followed my itinerary line by line, I did fine. I had a very intricate itinerary, down to the exact restaurants to visit, and it made me feel comfortable as we traveled around Ireland. And then Dublin happened. We arrived in Dublin earlier than expected (Friday afternoon, not Friday evening), so that threw me for a loop in trying to find something to do that afternoon. (We ended up not doing anything.) Another change was recognizing that we needed to cancel our plans for our day in Belfast on Sunday, and instead spend another day in Dublin since we hadn’t seen half of the stuff on our sightseeing list (like Trinity College and the Book of Kells).
I’m not great at responding well when things change and I have to alter my expectations. It really stressed me out to continually adjust our itinerary in Dublin. I wish I was better at spontaneity and going with the flow, but that’s not one of my strengths. I’m working on it!
4) Restaurant culture in Ireland is vastly different than the U.S.
Okay, this is very dumb American of me because of course it is, you’re in an entirely different country, dummy. But hey, first international trip for me – I learned some stuff!
In a typical Irish pub (and in some restaurants), there’s no waiting around to be seated. Usually, you just have to pray you can find an open table. This is not totally unusual, as there are some bars and restaurants that operate similarly in America, but that’s usually during slow times. When the dinner rush starts, you usually wait for a table. Not in Ireland! You better hope you can find an empty chair or two somewhere around the pub to sit.
The serving culture is also a bit different because often, we would order at the bar and pay at the bar. Sometimes, we would have a dedicated server who would take our order and bring us our food, but it was very rare for them to drop off a check at the end of the meal. We typically had to go up to the bar, point to where we were sitting, and they could magically bring up our entire order that way.
Lastly, tipping! There is no real tipping culture in Ireland, something we learned during our second day, after noticing there was no place to add a tip on our receipt. Obviously, you can tip your server if you’d like and it’s standard to give a 10% tip rather than the 15-20% that is typical in American culture.
The more you know, right?!
5) Irish people are genuine, friendly, and helpful.
We had been told how nice and friendly Irish people were, but I was blown away by their genuine warmth. Every person we came across – from bus drivers and waitstaff to taxi drivers and locals – was so friendly and helpful. They never made me feel like a dumb American, and it really made my time in their country so much better.
And there you go – some of my biggest lessons learned after my first international trip. I’m happy to report that my anxiety stayed pretty even during the trip. I was worried that I would spend the whole time just wanting to be back home in my familiar environment and not fully immerse myself in Ireland and be present on this trip. That’s how I felt on my last big vacation, and I was hoping it wasn’t going to be my new norm. Thankfully, it wasn’t an issue. I remained present in each moment and was sad for the trip to come to an end. Hooray for that!
I’ll have my first two trip recaps up this week, talking about our first day in Ireland and our second day, where we took a tour of the Cliffs of Moher!
What’s something you learned on a recent trip you took?
I’ve been awaiting your trip recaps as I’ve never been to Ireland so am excited to see it through your eyes! I feel the same way about preferring small towns to large cities. That’s how Phil and I feel, too. We live in a large metro area with 3 million people so when we go on vacation, we want to go somewhere that is quieter without traffic and honking horns and such. One exception to this is Paris. I love that city even though it’s enormous. But it doesn’t feel enormous because it is pretty spread out and it’s a really walkable city. But besides that, give me a place like Asheville over a busy city any day of the week!
I also get planning fatigue. I’m usually the most type A person on every trip, whether traveling with Phil or with friends (which is pretty rare now that I’m married – all my trips tend to be with Phil!). I usually get to a point where I don’t want to make any more decisions and I force Phil to decide where we are going to eat, etc.
Sometimes I learned on my last trip was that trips with Paul need to be longer to make it worth the hassle of traveling with ALL THE STUFF. Our Longboat Key trip was way too short but we wanted to test the waters with a short trip before going somewhere for 5-7 days!
This sounds like such a great trip. I loved following along on Instagram!
BEAUTIFUL photos! And I love this list of lessons learned. They will be so useful for future trips!
I’m so glad you enjoyed Ireland so much!! It took our trip there to realize we were into the countryside more than the big city as well and we did spend most of our trip in both Dublin and Galway. I wish we’d skipped 1-2 nights in Galway and spent another 1-2 in the countryside as our Ireland trip consisted of 1 night Dublin, 1 night country between Dublin and Galway (can’t remember the town), 3 nights in Galway, 1 night in Belfast, 2 nights in Northern Ireland countryside. We LOVED the 3 nights we spent in the countryside and definitely wish we’d done more.
I forgot about the paying at the bar thing! I remember that being an adjustment for us too.
Can’t wait to hear more about your trip!!
I am so happy that you had such a good time and were able to keep your anxiety at bay.
OMG that restaurant situation would stress me out. I am not aggressive enough to fight for seats or a table.
I might have already told you this, but we hosted an Irish girl from Belfast from the time I was 10 and up, so we’ve been friends for 20 years. She’s actually coming this summer and all of our kids will finally get to meet. I’ve been wanting to go to Ireland so badly for years so that I could see her home, and most of my family has gone, but we still haven’t made it happen. A lot of my family went last year for their wedding, but we were not about to fly across the world with Caleb. Sigh. SOMEDAY!!
I am so glad you got to dive into a completely new culture. Yes, I am sure it was all “new and overwhelming”, but also fun to find out how other countries operate differently, am I right?? 🙂
I find myself feeling a little “rusty” with customs at restaurants and such when I visit Germany….
That is so great you were able to be in the moment and enjoy despite some things not going as planned. I was wondering how that would go for you! YAY!
It’s good to learn these things as you travel and tweak each trip! I am constantly amazed at people who are so go with the flow. We have a few family members like that, and it helps balance out, well, the itinerary loving folks 😉 :-*
Isn’t it fun to learn different things, like how restaurant culture is like, and even the trains, and how you love small over big cities? I bet you learned SO much that you’ll be realizing as the weeks go by!
I learned how much I love exploring on my own on my recent trip. I mean, re-learned!
What a great adventure! Leaving the country is always such an incredible lesson and I feel really thankful I’ve been able to do it both with the Army and on my own. It’s taught me so much about the world and helped take me out of my comfort zone.