Adventure Within an Adventure

This is the short tale of how we ended up in Ireland and Istanbul (we thought about adding Iceland and Indiana to keep with the theme of "I"s, but they were too far away).

Without a wonderful wife accepting this paint-by-number adventure, it never would have happened.  However, I would like to take credit for, at the very least, the spark of inspiration.  It happened where I tend to do my best thinking … the bathroom.  Well, the shower to be more precise.  Perhaps, a bit difficult to explain to our female audience, I think most guys can relate.  Can I get an ‘amen’?

After returning to our hotel in Madrid around 1am, quite early if you ask the locals, I was in the shower when I was struck with a flash of brilliant travel plans.

I should preface this ‘spark of inspiration’ with this quick anecdote...  Before we left for Spain, Nancy and I composed a list of the many places that we’d like to visit, if we have a chance, during the next year while living in Spain.  Thanks to Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, we will refer to this as a ‘bucket list’ if you will… We weren’t sure how many of these we would accomplish, but we realized we would now be closer than ever before.  The list includes, but is not limited to, some of the following places in Europe:

1)      Dublin and Ireland road-trip

2)      Amsterdam, Netherlands

3)      Paris and tour of Southern France

4)      Cinque Terre

5)      Prague, Czech Republic

6)      Greece

7)      Istanbul, Turkey

8)      Scotland

9)      Morocco

10)    Iceland

11)    Lagos, Portugal

Now, back to the story…

So there I was, a man alone with my thoughts…  In Europe, many budget airlines exist to serve the more cost-conscious European travelers.  For example, instead of taking a ‘road-trip’ to Charleston or Florida for a long weekend (as Americans might do), college students in Europe can book a flight to whichever European capital they want to see, for as little as 5€ and up to maybe 80€.  Knowing that after we found a place to live, we would have almost three weeks available until we started our “job”, we were open to planning a longer, more ambitious trip.  Ireland was the first place to come to mind.

Ireland seemed like the perfect place to visit, September seemed like a good time of year, and we assumed Dublin was a popular location with the cheap airline companies. Not to mention, it’s a small enough country that is perfectly designed for a road-trip.  Step one complete.  Where to next?

Ever since a friend of ours returned from his own trip to Istanbul, Turkey, the idea of visiting this ‘lively’ city has stuck with us.  With London, England being a central hub for most of the budget airlines, and Dublin, Ireland being pretty close-by, we were hoping that we might just be able to find a cheap flight connecting through London to Istanbul.  The sparks began to “fly”.  Get it, “fly” because that’s exactly what we would be doing … okay … well, you get the idea.

By this point, I was pretty excited; of course there were some details that would still need to get figured out: dates, flights, hotels, budget, etc…  But, I was confident and ready to present my case to the Board of Directors (i.e. Nancy). 

After easily receiving the much needed approval from Nancy, and confirming that all the flights we would need, actually did exist, we began an onslaught of flight and travel bookings.  We feverishly worked on our computers for the next three hours… Nancy on the iPad, me on the laptop.  By 4am, we had all of our flights, luggage, rental car and even our first three nights in Dublin booked!  We found some great deals, for example, our Dublin to London Luton flight was only £14.99!  Usually, I’m the one that is dragging my feet on making definitive plans; however, I guess I lose my inhibitions a bit when it comes to travel.

By the end of the night, we were mentally exhausted from so much planning, but already looking forward to this new adventure.