Ireland, 2023--Day One (Chicago, a rugby match, and The Merry Ploughboy)

I feel like the title of this post is significant, because our trips to Ireland are increasing in number and at times, it's difficult to remember which Ireland trip happened when. This trip is long overdue--we have been trying to get here since before John lost his job in Chelsea and since COVID started. In fact, Ireland is the only place where John consistently wants to return, and when it didn't look like Spain was going to work out this year, he told me he wanted to go to Ireland. And to be fair, John deserves to pick the location of our vacation this spring--he has been working harder than he ever has, and we both knew he needed a break. With that, I decided to make this trip very "John specific", meeting his main requirement: that it be "cool" :-)

With the advent of COVID "ending", everyone and their uncle want to travel...which means travel prices are off the charts. No more $300 RT tickets to Utah--they are now averaging $700--and the ticket to Spain for Glo that we thought would be around $1,000? Nope. $1,400. Flying to Ireland from Detroit (with a connection in Toronto) was looking about the same as the cost to Spain, and I just couldn't pay it. I mean, we used to fly to Ireland from the Eastern seaboard for $700. So I decided to check Chicago. Turns out, I could get a non-stop flight from Chicago to Dublin for $740. It wasn't even a decision I needed to run by John; I bought the tickets.

Next was planning the actual trip to Ireland. John gave me a list of things we have done previously that he wanted to do again--all of them across the island from each other--but when I discovered that a MotorCross event was happening in Northern Ireland (which pushed the prices up to the highest of the year), I decided to go a different way. Ireland holds close to 100 heritage sites which can all be accessed with a $40 card, and besides being ancient and old, they are...yep, you guessed it..."cool" in the eyes of John. I decided we would land in Dublin and head west to discover as many as we could in a week's time.

John got off work on Friday at noon, we drove to Dexter to meet up with Ethan for lunch at Aubree's (he's watching the animals for the next week), and then started the slog to Chicago. I seriously dread the drive--I think anything and everything we could ever want to see in Chicago is around the lake, through Chicago and resting on the northern end of the city...as is O'Hare airport. I gave us three hours of leeway just in case, and we ended up needing all of it. Five hours to the airport through bumper-to-bumper traffic. At least an hour in line at security because, according to Aer Lingus, "we don't participate in TSA pre-check", only to arrive at the gate and find that their "scanner isn't working, so you must have a paper boarding pass. We repeat--your mobile boarding pass WILL NOT WORK." It was like a zoo at the gate with four other gates all within feet of each other, and all of us hoping to head off to some exotic destination. It was at this point that I wondered if that $800 in savings was really worth it. John told me that when we landed in Ireland, he would hand me the $800....

The BEGINNING of the
line at security.

And Aer Lingus was disappointing to say the least. We took our Ambien like good, little non-jet laggers, but the flight attendants ending up waking us up TWO AND A HALF HOURS EARLY to begin preparing to land. This was after banging the trolley into John's knee three times...and not apologizing.

But you know what? Like all things in Ireland, everything came up leprechauns and unicorns once we landed. Our three small suitcases all made it, we got the rental car easily enough, and we were off.

As part of the "John needs as much relaxation as possible" plan, I decided to do the driving this time (versus the nightmare of Germany, 2022). It's always a very fun challenge to drive a stick shift on the left side of the road (yes, my left hand moves the gear shift), but after a few minutes, I was in the zone. We got to THE most darling hotel in the heart of Dublin, Ariel House--actually, it was much more like a really beautiful house--but it was only feet from the Aviva stadium. Turns out there was a major big rugby match happening within the next few hours, and our street was going to be shut down, so John headed off on a run, and I headed to bed (after falling asleep in their living room while I waited for our room to be finished). And what a heavenly bed it was! In fact, when he came back an hour later, I just kept sleeping, come what may with the street and our plans for the evening :-) John told me that if I wanted a scarf, a lady was selling them out front for "a tenner". When we both woke up an hour later, the rugby match had started and we turned on the TV to watch it. Man, that's a crazy game!

Thankfully, the Garda let us out of the blocked-off street, and we were off for dinner at the Merry Ploughboy, a Kennedy fan favorite. Fun music, but in a strange turn of events, I look forward to the food even more! It's some of the best I've found in Ireland. Brown bread, Guiness beef stew. It felt fantastic, sitting there, showered, listening to the music of the Kennedy people, sitting across from my honey. I would write more, but we've been there so many times (and I've posted about it so many times) that I won't bore you with the details ;-)