Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Goin' to Ireland

Today we begin our series of guest posts from 2010 KC Irish Fest raffle grand prize winner Shaun McMahon. Watch for these often, and dream of your big raffle win...

4/20/2011

This past year I was lucky enough to win the raffle at the KC Irish Fest for the roundtrip fair to Ireland and it was a profound thrill and very exciting. So make sure that you buy your ticket this year - real people do win. Does lightening ( the luck O'the Irish) strike twice? I will buy another one this year.

For a considerable time my wife and I pondered when and where to go and finally we made up our minds. I think that dreaming and planning are some of the best parts of a trip. They are full of possibilities and have no limitations. At some point dreaming becomes reality and then the limitations set in, like we couldn't stay as long as we wanted.

We are leaving on 5/5/2011. We were first in Ireland about 5 years ago, traveled by car, stayed in B&B's, and went where we wanted, when we wanted. But, it involved a lot of on site planning. This time my wife, Joan, wanted to be a bit more organized and settled in the itinerary. She is very persuasive.

We are taking a set tour this time but managed to find one that went to some of our favorite places; ones we really wanted to return to and new ones that were very important to visit this time. Our tour starts in Dublin. From there we go to Kildare, Boyle, Sligo, Knock, Galway, Aran Islands, Kilfenora, Cliffs of More, Limerick, Adare, Killarney, ring of Kerry, Blarney, Waterford, Avocado, and Glendalough. A thoroughly American tour, seeing as many things as possible in a brief period of time. But, we also have some time to explore a bit on our own.

With any kind of luck, the ability to find hotspots, and all electronics functioning, we will send pictures and information regarding our visit while we are there.

Shaun Q. McMahon

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I remember when you won Shaun, and how much fun it was to hand you the certificate shortly after. Super exciting for me too! I'll be very interested in your posts and looking forward to seeing you at the raffle booth in September! Maureen

Anonymous said...

Where the heck is Avocado, Ireland? :)

Danny Regan said...

It's just down the road from Guacamole.

I'm going to make a wild guess here and assume Shaun meant Avoca, Wicklow.

Anonymous said...

I'm sure too but it just made me giggle.

Cheap Sligo Hostels said...

Good luck with the journey Shaun and be sure to ask Uncle Bloggy about his trip to Sligo.