Oh, hi. Ireland.

I'm going to Ireland. We're taking our kids to Europe for the very first time. Here's our plan...

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey, it's Rebecca. Welcome back to the pod. This is the place where I talk about, like behind the scenes, what's going on here behind the scenes at Hike, like a Woman Behind the scenes, what's going on here with me personally, with my health, with my family, with outdoor adventures, with all of the things, and I'm excited to have you join me today. So, thank you. This is very much a it's like me reading my diary on this podcast. If you want a more polished or professional content, head to our YouTube channel. I put a lot of time into our YouTube videos and they're mostly adventure travel related. We talk about all of the trips that we've been on lately Costa Rica, kilimanjaro, costa Rica, kilimanjaro, alaska, yellowstone, peru and we're getting ready to share some videos of a recent trip that my family just took to Ireland. In fact, we just got home from Ireland yesterday. So this is part one of our family trip to Ireland. I'm going to share the nitty gritty with you here and then next week I'm going to do a trip recap of. We're going to talk about our itinerary and we're going to talk about where we stayed, what we saw, what we ate, and then the week after that I'm going to talk about what our next big family adventure is going to be, because I lead group trips for women, but I also think it's important, as for my family, to also go on really big trips. And so let's take you to Ireland with me. And the reason we chose Ireland is because my husband and I love Ireland. We got our kids. So our kids are in middle school and we got our kids passports in 2020, literally a week before COVID hit and we got them passports because we just wanted to travel the world as a family and we didn't want our kids to have to wait until they were adults to go to Europe.

Speaker 1: 1:58

My first trip abroad was after I joined the army, and same with my husband trip abroad was after I joined the army, and same with my husband, and we just wanted to set money aside to give our children the gift of seeing how other cultures, customs, how other people live. And so we got our kids passports during COVID and we were saving up for a family trip abroad. But then we decided to remodel our basement and our remodel took all of our trip money because it was really expensive and we were cash flowing the remodel and we had to like repour our foundation and do all of these things. And so we just put our trip to Europe on hold while we finished up our basement. Once we had saved enough to do our trip again, we decided that we would head to Ireland as a family and we weren't able to get to Ireland during the summer just because it was a busy summer with a lot going on and we were trying to finish up the remodel. And then the earlier in the fall there were hike like woman trips, and then the earlier in the fall there were hike like woman trips to Alaska and Yellowstone and Peru, and so we decided that we would just pull the kids out of school for two weeks and take them to Ireland. So we just got back from Ireland.

Speaker 1: 3:16

The thing about pulling your kids out of school for two weeks is they just move schools, and I wasn't sure how it would go down with our kids missing so much school. I decided that I didn't even care if they missed two weeks of school, because I think it comes back to where are they going to learn more? In a classroom or traveling the world? And that's not to say that you can't learn a ton in a classroom, behind a computer or with a book, but I just think experiential education is really cool and I think my kids learned a ton while we were in Ireland, and I'll talk about that next week. This trip to Europe was also really important to me because, since cancer, I just feel like the future's uncertain. So I kind of live in this, this, this, this, this confusing place to my husband where I'm like carp, adm, seize the day, book the tickets, go on the trip, go on the adventure, whatever. And then like, oh my gosh, we have to save money just in case cancer comes back. So it's, it's this weird gray area that I'm living in and going to Ireland with the kids was us saying seize the day.

Speaker 1: 4:29

My husband and I actually went to Ireland in 2010. It was our honeymoon. We actually we got married in 2005. And then we deployed, and then we deployed again and so we didn't. We didn't really get to have a honeymoon until 2010. And we had just gotten back from our deployment to Iraq. So my husband had spent. It was his third deployment and my second deployment, and these are army deployments. So we I was deployed 15 months on my first deployment and 12 months on my second deployment, with a year home between, and my husband had pretty much been the same cadence with it. It was like deployment home for a year, deployment, home for a year, deployment.

Speaker 1: 5:17

By the time we got to take this trip to Ireland together, it was really special because we had spent so much of those first years of our marriage separated because of deployments. So we flew to Ireland we didn't really have a solid plan, but we'd sent letters back and forth and we'd read guidebooks during deployments and so we kind of had a good idea with what we wanted to see. But we rented a car and we drove all over Ireland and we saw all of the major things and all the off the beaten path things Well, not all of them, but a lot of them and it was really the best trip we've ever had together. It was great for our marriage, it was great for our friendship and we just had so much fun.

Speaker 1: 6:00

So when we decided that we needed to take the kids to Ireland, we decided that we needed to have three rules going into this trip. So the first rule was we didn't want to drive, because it's just kind of annoying driving in Ireland and also it's expensive to drive. So we created an itinerary that only utilized public transportation. And our second rule was that we weren't going to overschedule. When it comes to adventures, I like to schedule every moment of every day because I want to see all the things. I didn't fly halfway across the world so that I can only see one or two things. I want to see all the things, but my husband doesn't like to travel like that. So we decided we weren't going to have any overscheduling, we were just going to plan one activity a day. And then our third rule for this trip was carry on. Only we wanted to pack as light as possible because we were relying on public transportation. We booked tickets to and from Dublin, which we figured would be where we would start and stop our trip. We love Dublin, so that's where we wanted to start and finish our trip.

Speaker 1: 7:17

Putting this trip together as a family was really fun. We'd all gather around the table and we'd have laptops and our iPads, and we'd have our laptops and our iPads and we'd have our guidebooks and we'd drink root beer out of bottles which is really special and we would look at sites that we wanted to see. We would look at guiding companies and tour groups. We looked at hotels and trains and taxis and transportation. It really became this family project because my husband and I wanted our kids input on what they wanted to see and on what they wanted to do in Ireland. We didn't want to just plan it our way, because we wanted our kids to have some ownership and we wanted them to be excited to see the things that they were excited to see, and it was really cool.

Speaker 1: 8:05

So, anyway, if you're wondering how this whole trip got put together and if you're interested in the tools that we use as a family when it comes to planning trips, I have a free downloadable guide on our website, hikelikeawomancom. You can head there and check it out. This is the same trip planner that I used for a family trip to Washington DC last March and a family trip that I planned throughout Nebraska, wyoming and Montana in July, and then it's exactly the process that we used to plan this family trip to Ireland and I'd love to share that for you. It's free. I just asked for your email address. So if you're interested in knowing how my family plans trips, go check that out and then come back next week because I'm going to share a little trip recap here and then I'm going to tell you about the next big adventure that my family is planning. That's all I have for you today. Thanks so much for joining me. I'll see you next week.