Violet Sky

I’ve gone back and forth about posting this. On the one hand, I love reading the nitty-gritty details of people’s vacations – the number (if any) of points they used, the amount everything cost, anything interesting they did as an activity, how much they used cash, their strategies for booking various things, etc., etc.

On the other hand, although the initial purpose of this blog is to provide at outlet for the kind of stuff I want to talk about but don’t have a real place for it (and also to reduce my Reddit usage, since that’s where those thoughts have historically ended up since I stopped using Twitter), I do wrestle a little with whether attaching costs to these trips could be construed as bragging in some way. Why I worry about it for trip costs specifically and not my monthly net worth statements, I don’t know. Net worth and its short-term movements are all mostly abstract to me. “It’s fake money until it’s truly my money to spend” kind of vibe, which is probably why I have hated watching our cash reserves drop, even though it’s been planned.

But it’s not really logical to think that about one money matter and not the other, not to mention it’s not as if this blog has a robust readership, so I’m ripping the bandaid off and starting with the financials for our Ireland/Northern Ireland trip. All numbers are in USD and skip-links have been added in case anyone wants numbers only, without commentary.

Lodging – Food – Transportation – Entertainment – Miscellaneous

Lodging

Merchant	Expense	Category
Airbnb – Galway	$550.71	Lodging
Airbnb – Belfast	$374.13	Lodging
Hilton – Dublin	$1,030.79	Lodging
Imperial Hotel – Cork	$546.31	Lodging
Holiday Inn – Derry	$296.75	Lodging
Hyatt – Dublin	$0	Lodging
Imperial Hotel – Cork	$39.34	Parking
Hilton – Dublin	$80.34	Room upgrade
Total	$2,918.37

I am a recovering Airbnb user. With a family of four, and specifically one where the children refuse to share even a queen bed, it’s most often economical to go for an Airbnb. Airbnbs also facilitate making our own espresso, making breakfast, and eating our leftovers, so there are some carry-on cost savings around food, as well.

Airbnb also has had a not insignificant role in housing availability across much of the world and the quality of the place you land in is so variable as to be essentially a crapshoot each time you click Reserve. I tried my best to book this trip exclusively in hotels, given that it was just my husband and I, but in both Belfast and Galway, the cost differential between hotels and Airbnbs was so great that I caved and did the Airbnb. I generally regretted both of those choices, though one of our hotel stays was also unpleasant, so it’s not exactly a guarantee that choosing a hotel means a uniform experience.

The Hilton in Dublin was so generic, and filled with American tourists, that if you spent your entire trip only in the hotel, you’d struggle to imagine that you’d left the United States. I impulsively moved our room to a corner room for an extra charge, and it wasn’t particularly worth it – the view was nicer, but it also had a street lamp right outside the window. Now we know why the room was available, I guess.

The Imperial Hotel was one of the nicer hotels that my husband and I have stayed at, and shockingly it was essentially the same nightly price as every Airbnb in the area. It didn’t have a mini fridge, which we didn’t love, but it was otherwise quite lovely. I didn’t think that the parking charge was unfair, but I ended up regretting having a car while we were in Cork because I had missed that there was a train that would have taken us to Midleton and we didn’t use the car outside of that excursion until we left the city entirely.

When I booked our Galway Airbnb, the listing had AC as an amenity. I know this because I went into this trip understanding that air conditioning was relatively rare in Ireland, so I made sure to check the AC checkbox when filtering for options. We arrived and I couldn’t find any air conditioner, which was poor timing since it was over 70, the house was evidently designed to preserve heat, and the bedroom was upstairs. We opened the windows for a while to air it out, but as evening fell, bugs started pouring into the unit, so we closed everything up again. I’m not a great sleeper typically, but heat doesn’t often bother me at night, except it was so warm that I could not sleep.

And could not sleep. And couldn’t sleep as I looked up hotels in the area that had availability and air conditioning. And couldn’t sleep at 3 a.m. as I cried a little to myself in bed. Eventually, my husband woke up, said, “Fuck the bugs,” threw open the window, and eventually it cooled down enough that I was able to sleep for about three hours. Now, you might be thinking, “Caterpillar, why didn’t you just open the window sooner?” but by the time I was desperate enough to tolerate an influx of insects, I wasn’t rational enough to have that thought at all. I contacted the host, who first directed me to a standalone air conditioning unit – this unit was broken, and I suspect was the original reason why the listing had AC. She later came by with a desk fan, which was honestly plenty – like I said, I don’t normally have trouble sleeping in the heat, so just having the air circulated was enough.

On the heels of this experience, we moved on to our second Airbnb, in Belfast. We arrived and I looked for an air conditioner, as the listing still had AC as an amenity. Nothing. I contacted the host, who said to turn the heat down to 9C – it was already down to 9C, because, of course, it’s heat, not cooling. I inspected the heating units, and they were clearly meant for radiant heat and had no mechanism of cooling. I contacted the host again. She admitted that the AC was broken and not located inside the unit, and rushed out to buy a fan. Again, this sufficed for sleep, but I was glad that this was our last Airbnb of the trip.

The Holiday Inn Express in Derry didn’t have working AC, no matter how much we fiddled with it, but at this point we were so exhausted with the air conditioning situation on the island that we didn’t bother reporting it until we checked out. I mentioned it on an Instagram story and IHG followed up, but when passing the complaint on to the hotel manager, he opted to tell us that we were wrong, it was working, and also why didn’t we report it to the hotel? I was not invested in the resolution, nor seeking anything from IHG, so ignoring the report would honestly have been a better move on his part.

Our final night on the island was spent using a free room night I had from Hyatt. My job typically allows me to choose hotels when I travel for them, so I’ve been slowly amassing different Hyatt brands to trigger their Brand Explorer Award, which we used here. After the stress of the final three places we stayed, the Hyatt Centric in Dublin was incredible. So sad that we were only there for one night!

Food

Category	Expense
Airport	$166.39
Alcohol	$377.21
Coffee	$95.42
Grocery	$488.81
Minimart	$127.40
Restaurant	$1,277.37
Total	$2,532.60

I won’t go into as much detail here, because frankly that’s a level of minutiae even I’m not interested in, but the food costs really surprised me. Alcohol is not inclusive of any alcohol bought at a grocery store, but is inclusive of alcohol bought at standalone “off-license” stores that don’t sell anything else. We had one nicer meal in Belfast, at Stock Kitchen, but otherwise essentially nickeled and dimed ourselves to death. Our favorite meal of the trip was at Chaska, so much so that we went back a second time on our last day in Dublin.

Transportation

Category	Expense
Airfare	$4,276.30
Car Rental	$742.91
Gas	$37.01
Parking	$7.85
Rail	$476.38
Rideshare	$217.65
Taxis	$67.94
Tolls	$4.94
Total	$5,830.98

We spent $1,923.15 per person on premium economy seats on British Airways, plus $198 per person for seat selection on the long-haul flights, plus $17 per person for seat selection on the domestic flights. This was our first time flying premium economy long haul and let me tell you – it was worth every penny. I’ve been consuming luxury airline content for a while and still have not been able to pull the trigger on anything more luxurious than premium economy, but having lots of leg room, a steeper pitch when reclined, and no worry about jostling over overhead bin space was an absolute delight compared to our 10 hour flight to Italy last year.

We rented cars through Budget and Enterprise, both of which went off without a hitch. Budget asked for a nearly $200 deposit for whatever reason, but it was refunded promptly upon return of the car. The guy at the Budget desk was a funny guy who teased us about how he knew we were Americans because we booked an automatic, and followed up with, “And let me guess, you have iPhones?” (Guilty as charged) It was a frictionless an experience as in the US.

Aside from that, we spent the rest of the trip traveling by rail. Let me tell you something: I absolutely love traveling by rail. I was looking forward to every single train ride and enjoyed each one (though some more than others). When moving around the Republic of Ireland, we were on Irish Rail, and when moving around Northern Ireland plus to and from the Republic of Ireland, we were on Translink. I splurged on first class for both our Translink legs and was impressed – not quite as nice as first class in Italy, but still quite nice.

Entertainment

Merchant	Expense
Dunluce Castle	$15.20
Museum of Free Derry	$20.27
Titanic Belfast	$70.02
St. Nicholas Church	$15.04
Blarney Castle	$47.29
King John’s Castle Limerick	$32.24
Belfast Tours NI	$716.63
Midleton Distillery Tour	$56.47
Kylemore Abbey	$36.92
Guinness Storehouse Experience	$205.98
Total	$1,216.06

As is probably evident, the bulk of these expenses were clustered around a couple of activities. The private driver tour in Northern Ireland was pricy in two steps: you pay $255.50 as a deposit, and then pull out £350 cash to pay the driver directly after the tour. As I mentioned in my trip report, this was absolutely worth the money and was a highlight of the trip, so no regrets there.

Miscellaneous

Category	Expense
Shopping	$381.87
Fees	$3.34
Withdrawal	$41.89
Mobile	$169.00
Internet	$45.84
Total	$641.94

We are bigger eaters than we are shoppers, so our shopping was truly little bits here and there – souvenirs for loved ones, items we liked, miscellaneous bits. Over $100 of the total cost was spent on souvenirs at the Titanic Belfast, including a sweatshirt that I got in large part because I was chilly.

We did withdraw cash from our credit union checking account one time, which accounts for the $3.34 in fees. For the other withdrawal, we used our Schwab Investor Checking account, which has no foreign transaction fees and refunds any ATM fees worldwide. If I had planned better, we would have had more money in that account, but we only really use our Schwab checking for international travel.

$5 of the Mobile charge is for the eSim I bought on day 2 of the international outage. I ended up using Airolo on a whim, after seeing some recommendations on Reddit amidst the discussions of the outage. It was fine, I suppose. It worked most of the time, though it was not as reliable as the Verizon network when it was working. Originally, the international roaming plan was $92/line for an entire month, but after the outage, they gave us a $20 bill credit to compensate for the inconvenience.

Summary

Category	Expense
Lodging	$2,918.37
Food	$2,532.60
Transportation	$5,830.98
Entertainment	$1,216.06
Miscellaneous	$641.94
Total	$13,139.95

And that’s it! We did not have a specific budget for this trip and many of our choices reflected that – though I suppose we never truly have a firm budget for any trip. Our focus on these trans-continental trips is always on maximizing experiences, even if it costs a little more money, and I think we achieved that on this trip. Onto the next!