Cruising Ahead: Ireland

After toying with the idea of going back to Europe, an amazing cruise vacation deal fell into my lap that fit exactly into the time off I had already requested for a possible New England cruise in September.  Since the New England cruises are so expensive, a 20% off coupon came in the mail and after poking around on the NCL website and talking to my cruise consultant, a future vacation was born.  We are going to Ireland!

I would not have considered a vacation with just Ireland.  Originally we had thought we would go on a sailing that included Iceland, Norway, and Ireland (two ports).  As I said earlier, the dates fit perfectly, the price was great, and we will be seeing all of Ireland with stops at seven different cruise ports.  We set sail from Southampton, UK arriving in Cobh and then make our way clockwise around Ireland ending in Dublin.  It is a 10-day cruise with two sea days.

Here is the day-by-day plan:

Embark in Southampton, UK

Day 1 - Sea Day

Day 2 - Cork Cobh

Day 3 - Dingle 

Day 4 - Foynes Limerick

Day 5 - Galway 

Day 6 - Killybegs

Day 7 - Belfast N. Ireland

Day 8 - Dublin, which docks in Dun Laoghaire

Day 9 - Sea day 

Day 10 - Disembark in Southampton, UK 

We will spend the day before and the day after London visiting the Royal Air Force Museum, the London Film Museum, and using the underground to see the outer suburbs such as Kensington, Knotting Hill, and Covent Gardens.  We also plan to stop through Kings Cross Station to see the 9 3/4 platform.

When we arrive in Southampton pre-cruise we will pop into the Solent Sky Air Museum and on our stop in Foynes, Ireland we will visit the Flying Boat Museum.  I am looking at excursions from some of our ports to see the beautiful countryside as I don’t want to miss this opportunity.  We are lucky to be in port a full 12 hours most days.  I especially can’t wait to walk around these cute ports to pop into a pub and grab a pint.  I’ve made it my goal to try one local beer at each port stop and you better believe the Guinness Factory is on the list for Dublin!  In Dublin we will book the hop-on/hop-off bus.  Oh man, so much planning and research to do.

I’ll pop in at a later time and share more on our beautiful ship, NCL Star, which will take us around all of Ireland.