Hello friends! We just returned from a fabulous trip to Japan yesterday and are adjusting back to Eastern time – that 14-hour time difference is no joke, and our baby girl is pretty sure it’s daytime in the middle of the night. We’ll get there, and there is much, much more to come on all the great things we did during our 2+ week vacation, but first things first: we’re going to Ireland!
Tyler and I knew that we would likely be making a return trip to Ireland this year, as he is currently working on obtaining some documents around his family’s history in the country. He had a price alert set up, and we were keeping a close eye on timing that would work for us. When we found tickets for our 2022 trip to Ireland, we got them at a great price (~$400 for Tyler’s basic economy ticket, and ~$600 for my upgraded ticket), which was how we got so many family members involved.
Fun fact: we had actually been trying to book tickets to Tokyo when we bought those tickets, so we’ve come full circle there!
We were pretty confident we wouldn’t see anything at the $400 price point, based on flight prices in the market right now, but we did expect we could make something in the $500s work. We’re particularly sensitive to flight pricing now that we’re buying tickets for four people, so we wanted to make sure we didn’t overspend. A few weeks ago, I was poking around on Google Flights to see what was available and flights to Dublin for November caught my eye. The timing worked well for us for our jobs, allowing us to capitalize on some baked in holidays, and it gave us the time to refresh our budget.
So with just a few days left before we boarded our flight to Tokyo, we jumped on them. Since our daughter will be almost one, we bought her a seat – we learned on our 2022 trip that it’s worth it with a baby that age, even if we could have her fly in our laps for much cheaper. We spent $567 per person (with a base fare of $50, per the Delta breakout), which isn’t an amazing price, but one we felt good about locking in.
And now, we plan! We’ve been kicking around the idea of doing a road trip around the island, similar to what we did in Iceland a few years ago (but without the campervan, haha). We haven’t ever rented a car in Ireland, but it was hugely helpful when we went to the Coromandel Peninsula in New Zealand, and it makes getting around with kids a lot easier. If you have any must-visits or a recommended route – I definitely want to revisit Kinsale – please send them my way! I’m so excited to go back to Ireland, this time as a family of four.
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