Prepping for Europe

First of all, sorry for my lack of blog writing! Teaching towards the end of the year is actually more hectic than you would think! However, I'm back- at least temporarily...

As most of you know, my husband and I are going on our first trip to Europe! We are so thrilled to visit Ireland and Spain for 3 weeks this summer! I thought that now would be a good time to share with friends and family the plans we have along with some of my packing essentials!

Next week we start our adventure by flying for what seems nearly 24 hours from Sacramento to Shannon, Ireland! When we arrive in Shannon we will be renting a car; which means driving on the wrong left side of the road, the wrong right side of the car, and {because of cost} having the manual stick shift in the wrong left hand. If that isn't an adventure then I don't know what is! After getting our rental car, we plan to spend the morning exploring Shannon and Limerick so that we can practice driving! From there we will drive about 3 hours to the Dingle Peninsula. We will be spending two nights in Dingle and then backtracking to the area of Doolin. In the Doolin area we plan to do a hike or two, visiting the Cliffs of Moher and visit the Aren Islands by ferry. We will then spend two more nights in Galway. After Galway, we will drive about 2 1/2 hours across the island to Dublin, where we will spend 3 nights. While we are in Dublin we plan to visit Trinity College Library, and the Guinness and Jameson Distilleries.

We will then fly from Dublin to Bilbao, Spain! From Bilbao we will be taking a bus to San Sebastian, where we have rented an apartment in the downtown area for 5 nights. We plan to take in the beautiful beaches, gorgeous mountain views and to-die-for food! We will then take a bus from San Sebastian to Barcelona and spend our last 6 nights here in another apartment. While in Barcelona we plan to see many of the Gaudi architecture including; La Sagrada Familia, Casa Batillo, and Parc Guëll. We also plan to check out Las Ramblas and La Boqueria Market.

Although James and I have planned the places we will stay and the towns we will stay in, we really are planning to "go with the flow" of our other plans. If we see something along the way we want to explore, we will! 

Here is a map to give you an idea of what our itinerary looks like!


Not only did it take many nights to plan the trip but it has also taken me a ton of research and shopping time to figure out what we need to pack! Here are three of my most recent packing essentials (with many more details about that to come after the trip):

Packing Cubes - Steripods - Compression Socks