Big Plans

Thank you all for your kind comments on my last post. I was feeling a bit guilty for deleting those blogs I followed and for hiding some of my friends on Facebook. It's not that I'm a completely bitter woman, it's just that I don't have the energy to feel happy for someone and feel sad for myself. Once I get over this feeling of sadness I'll probably go back to reading those blogs. But not now. And some blogs I can handle reading while others I can't. It's just how it is. Fran summed up my last post so well: "I have to see the end of the road regardless of the outcome." How very true. I had to create a stopping point for myself, before my emotions took over and I made decisions and spent money I would have regretted. And that stopping point is after we use all our frozen embryos.

Speaking of frozen embryos, Brandon and I scheduled our first FET for January. Nurse D said my transfer will be around the 31st. Until then we're on our own in the baby-making department.

But on to the Big Plans. Brandon and I decided that it's finally time to redeem our consolation prize from our first IVF. I'm super excited to start planning our trip. We haven't picked the exact dates yet but we narrowed it down to two choices: mid-March during Brandon's Spring Break (we'll be there for Saint Patrick's Day!) or late May between Brandon's spring and summer classes. Both choices have their pros and cons and so it will be hard to decide when to go. We'll be going for about 11 days which will give us 9 days of sightseeing and 2 days for travel. A few friends made suggestions for us and we added them to our list of Things We Must See in Ireland. That list is:

Cliffs of Moher
Ring of Kerry
Kylemore Abbey
Drink beer in a pub (even though we hate beer, it's Ireland dammit and I'm drinking Guinness)
Visit some castles
Spend the night in a castle (Brandon has his heart set on Waterford Castle)

Aside from all the touristy stuff, we'd love to visit some small towns and go shopping and eat at little restaurants that nobody's heard of except for the locals. That is the kind of traveling that Brandon and I like to do. We like to truly experience the places we visit, not just visit the popular areas, buy some postcards and brag that we were there. Unfortunately I'm not sure if we'll have enough time to visit the popular places and the small towns. But I've got vacation planning down to a science so after I do some more research I'll have more information and I'll be able to figure out how much we'll be able to do.

We plan on making a loop around Ireland, starting in Dublin and visiting various towns along the way, hoping and praying that we can get a bus or a train to all these places. We don't plan on renting a car while we're there (hey, it worked for us in Peru and we were there for a month). So here's a rough schedule of our trip:

Day 1: Dublin (beer in a pub)
Day 2: Waterford (for the castle stay but we need to find other stuff to do there)
Day 3: Cork (Blarney Castle?)
Day 4: Killarney (Ring of Kerry)
Day 5: Limerick (no idea what to do here but I like the name of the town)
Day 6 and 7: Galway (Cliffs of Moher, Kylemore Abbey)
Day 8: Dublin

I'm not sure what to do with our 9th day of travel. Maybe we'll spend an extra day in one of those towns. We decided to avoid Northern Ireland because we didn't feel like having to switch from euros to pounds and all that. But if I do more research and find that we have time to go then we might shoot over to Belfast for a day.

So if anyone has been to Ireland or lives there (Fran!) and can give some tips or advice of things we should do, I would much appreciate it! We have plenty of time to make plans for our trip and I'm glad it will give me something to do.