T-Minus 6...

In a mere six days, we'll be landing in Dublin. We'll be leaving Jacksonville on Tuesday, flying to Chicago. We'll spend a lovely three hours or so in the Windy City (well, in O'Hare Int'l) before boarding our overnight flight to Dublin, Ireland, where we'll arrive at 10:45am local time.

Everything's been confirmed; flight and seat selections, room reservations; everything. All that's left now is, once we're there, to figure out our itinerary while we're there.

As we'll be arriving somewhat early in the day, the plan is to get settled into our hotel and then grab a cab into Dublin (our hotel is by the airport). I'm told the cost will be around  €15-20 ($17-$23 US) so, while not nearly as cheap as a public bus, not prohibitively expensive and it'll get us into town a lot faster. From where I sit, that's the payoff. And, while they don't have Uber in Dublin, they do have something similar known as MyTaxi, so that could be another option.

While we're enjoying our first day in Dublin, we'll scope out the day-trips and the "hop on/hop off" buses which operate in the city. We'll likely do the in-city tour bus thing for the first two days, simply because it would be impossible to see everything we want to in a single day. After two days of exploring downtown Dublin, we'll venture out beyond the city to explore the countryside; the rugged coastlines and the castles and small towns.

For walking around downtown, I've downloaded an app called "maps.me". Basically, it's got frighteningly detailed maps of just about anywhere on the planet. Looking at the map for Dublin, I can't imagine wanting to get somewhere in Dublin and not being able to find it.

I'll be bringing at least one camera, and my brother is bringing two. He plans on shooting black and white film as well as digital. That should produce some interesting results. I have in the neighborhood of 30 film cameras, but I'm leaving them home. I would only want to use a medium format one, anyway, and that can take up some room.

So, the excitement is slowly ramping up. We've never done a trip like this before, so it should be both fun and interesting to see how we fare. I suspect this will end up being a trip to remember for a long, long time...