I have been wanting to go on a trip to Wales for a very long time, at least several years. In fact I had planned on going in 2013, then when that wasn't going to work, 2014. But that didn't work either. So when I decided that we would actually be able to do it this year, I was quite excited.
I started going through all of the files and links I had saved from the last time I had planned this trip. I tried to figure out when would be the best time to go and how long it would take to get our passports and what we needed to do to get our passports.
So many things had to be decided. Where would we stay? What did we want to do or see? How long could we be gone? But finally we just took a jump. We ended up talking to a travel agent. I had not really considered this much. But as I was going to need an international driver's licence and they were the only place I could get one from, I figured what could it hurt.
We sat down and talked to Leslie for quite a while. She was very helpful and not at all pushy. I like that in a person. Then of course I went home, and spent a couple of days just thinking about the stuff that she had said. It turns out that we did go back to Leslie. She got us our plane tickets. We talked to her about the hotels and cottages. But they do not do the self-catering cottages. This is something I thought we needed. We needed to be able to save on the eating out all of the time as well as having a place to do laundry. I felt that we would be more comfortable in a home-like surrounding rather than a hotel for 2-3 weeks.
So I did lots of searching for a cottage. I found one that I that would be great for us. Madog Wells. I contacted them and got it set up for the dates that we needed. Now all we needed what a hotel in Dublin. We went back in and talked to Leslie about that. She did some searching, but hotels outside of the USA are interesting. Normally it is rather hard to find a place for more than 2 people. And I was looking for a room for 5. Leslie was having a hard time with it. She suggested that we look for something similar to the cottage arrangement. We went home and did just that. In the end we set up our own hotels in Dublin as well.
One of the most interesting things about the early planning and set up, we dealing with the passports. Just getting all of the papers signed and ready was a task. Jonathan had to sign things for the girls giving me permission to take them out of the country. Then we realized that Zeb and I had my parents' address on our driver's licence. They wouldn't let us get passports with the wrong address. So we had to get new licences. More waiting... Finally those came in and it was time to go in to the passport office.
It is lucky that Leslie had told me that I would have to write a check at the passport office. I hardly every use checks. But that is how they do it. Of course the funny thing is that I didn't have to write ONE check. Each of the passports had to have its own check attached to it, and then there was another check for the Hall county office. FIVE checks. I was sweating it... Luckily I had five checks left... not a single more. Or I would have had to come back another day to finish this job, something that should have been easy.
Of course now all we had to do was wait. Plane tickets, housing, car rental, passports. Mostly we were ready.
Planning a trip right at the end of school is sort of a crazy thing to do when you are a teacher. So many things to do. I felt very busy the last few weeks before our trip. Much job related stress, even to the point of finding out I may not have a job when we get back from the vacation. But there is nothing I can do about it, the tickets are non-refundable. Even if I wanted to try and save the money in case I didn't have a job, I couldn't. So we were going, and I was just going to try and not stress about it. (of course I knew that had I knew about the possible lack of job, I wouldn't have planned the trip at all...timing is very important in life.)
Doing wash, setting clothes in bags. What are we forgetting? What will we need?
Are we ready for this? I can't believe I am taking my kids out of the country and a two week long vacation when life is getting so unstable. Breathe. It is going to be amazing.
