Dublin, Ireland (Our Take on this Cute City)

 

Ireland 🇮🇪

From the moment we stepped off the plane there in Dublin we could say that we fell in love with Ireland! (As long as I leave out the part that we had the worst taxi driver in Dublin pick us up from the airport!! )
But as I said, I’ll just leave that part out. Lol!

What a LOVELY country!! We started our summer travels from SFO (San Francisco) with our friends who were flying on the same airline, (Aer Lingus) direct to Dublin. Our girls were over the moon to be flying with their cute friends for almost 10 hours and staying at the same hotel. It was fun for us parents as well because this was my husband’s close friend from childhood and his darling wife who I love.

It wasn’t a bad flight at all, it was half full so the girls were able to stretch out a bit. But getting through immigration in the Dublin airport was an adventure to say the least. It was the LONGEST line ever, and all we kept saying was that we wished they had a line for families with young kids. The next thing you know, one of the girls starts to throw up, so I pulled out a big ziplock bag and my girlfriend caught it all in the bag.  She then asked if they could move us to the front of the line because of her child being sick and they did. (We thanked that child after we were done) lol! She was fine, just lack of sleep. (Poor thing)

So… we decided to stay in the“Temple Bar” area of Dublin and I have to say it was a good choice.

Everything was in walking distance, and The Temple Bar Hotel was so cute and super clean. We would stay there again even though they didn’t have air conditioning in our room. It’s not normally hot like it was while we were visiting, but it wasn’t that bad and they were great to give us a complementary breakfast to make up for it.
We loved that the hotel had theses cute little bags filled with drinks and goodies sitting on the beds for us. It was a perfect little snack after a long flight. The girls opened them right up.

Breakfast in the hotel(Love our Croatian waitress)

Dinner was really good! We had traditional Irish food at the restaurant located right next to the hotel. Our friend’s taxi driver recommended it to us. It was great for kids as well.

We did a little bit of walking around the temple bar area to get the lay of the land. We had to stop in for a little ice cream just to keep the girls up a little longer with their jet lag starting to set in.  Cloud Nine was super perfect with not only ice cream, but made to order crêpes as well. (A must stop here in Dublin)

The next morning we did the hop-on hop-off (red) tour bus all over Dublin. It was a perfect way for the girls to see the town as we knew they wouldn’t want to walk all over due to their jet lag. My little one would have been complaining for sure if we walked it. 😉
Later that day our husbands went to the Guinness beer house, but it was SO busy they wouldn’t have made it back in time for our friend’s flight and for us to get our rental car. So instead, they went whiskey tasting at the “Teeling Distillery” and LOVED it. Their tour guide was super funny.  My husband said it was just nice to be laughing that much and the tastings were also really good. (Next time we visit we will be sure to reserve our tickets for Guinness!)

The girls and I went shopping.  And I tell you– my girls are really into it! They love to shop even more when we are in other countries.
Zara, H&M and the Disney store all know my girls well there in Dublin. 😂

We had lunch in the same area with all the girls. We loved the restaurant and the yummy Cajun chicken Caesar salad.(Who knew i’d love that salad ALL over Ireland! Couldn’t stop ordering it) By the time we were finishing up, our husbands made it back from picking up our rental car;  seeing my husband on the other side of the car and the look on his face was priceless!! 😉😂😩

As we opened the car door, He say’s to us “get in and everyone shut up” 🤐 😂
We said good-bye to our friends who were going onto Croatia that day (But we would see them again in a week.)

We started out on our 2 hour and 55min drive from Dublin to the Dingle Peninsula.  It was a little nerve-racking getting out of Dublin, but once we were out on the highway my husband got used to driving on the opposite side of the road. Driving across Ireland was wonderful.  The super small  picturesque towns that we came across were cute.  We absolutely ADORED our drive. (The roads were super tiny but we managed!)

Dublin exceeded my expectations. We made sure to stop again on our way back from our European vacation. We had a one night layover and booked the same hotel because we felt so comfortable there. “Not to mention there was a couple of Croatians working there that made my husband and I feel right at home.” Dublin wasn’t like a lot of big cities that we have flown into in our past travels. We felt so safe there, and the city is full of such lovely people.  We will FOR SURE be back SOON.