About a year ago my husband, knowing the two top items on my bucket list, asked me which place I wanted to go first: Ireland or Yosemite!  I picked Ireland!!!  So I started planning!  My husband, as it turned out, did not want to go to Ireland.  But he did not want me going alone.  So I set about finding a traveling companion.  First on my list was my best friend.  She would love to go, she said, but being as she takes care of her elderly father every day and has other family obligations, she would have to pass.  On to the next person!  So next I asked a fellow Art Guild member who also loves travel.  But Since I was planning on leaving only a few weeks after she got back from winter in Florida, she also passed.  Now, I have two sisters and one of them lives out west and I don’t get to see her that often.  So I asked her, even though she has already been to Ireland!  She responded with gusto that she would LOVE to go!  So now that I had my traveling companion I started planning what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go.  After a while my sister asked if we should invite my other sister.  So we added a third person to our group!  As it turned out, she will be coming six days after me and my other sister as she has two granddaughters graduating that she wanted to stick around for.  As I planned each place we would be staying, I tentatively booked multiple places to stay and then ran each place by my sisters and also by my Irish cousins that we will be visiting while we are there.  Eventually I narrowed each place down and arrived at a pretty good itinerary: Dublin for 3 days with a cousin, Trim for 2 days, Doolin for 4 days, Bunratty for 1 day, Ardfert in County Kerry with cousins for 6 days, Blarney for a day, Waterford for 3 days and then back to Dublin to fly home.   3 glorious weeks!  Of course there were plenty of places I wanted to see but couldn’t fit them in.  I could easily spend all summer there!

Now I am in the process of gathering what I plan on taking, not only for clothes, but for camera equipment.  I just placed my last order (well for now, anyway) with Amazon.  This trip is finally giving me an excuse to get a bunch of little photo odds and ends that make organization easier.  And also to pick up extra batteries and SD cards for my two cameras.  Next on my list is to learn more about taking video with my cameras!  I’ll keep you posted on how that is coming!

29 days & counting!!!