Chapter 1 | The Greatest Family Vacation EVER!!!! - well for us anyway!

I was talking with James today, he was recollecting places we had visited when the kids were younger. He brought up what he called the "Family Trip to Europe". I told him, see that's something you could write about on "Your Blog" (which he's never created because he has nothing to write about), Well I thought that I might like to write about it myself!

First of all most of you know that I traveled thousands of miles while I was consulting, factually I traveled over 1,500,000 frequent flier miles. Keep in mind that at the time any trip under 500 miles was credited as 500 miles... OK it was still alot.  To get an even better perspective the two(2) first class tickets, and three(3) business class tickets (we didn't want to put up with the kids in the same cabin) I got on "frequent flier miles" would have sold for over $50,000.00 at the going discounted business and first class rates.  Yes I flew alot, and yes my wife suffered the most, taking care everything on the homefront... Now that we're past that.....

The concept of going to "Ireland" started in January of James senior year of high school, he was seventeen at the time, he's now thirty, so it's been awhile and hopefully I can be accurate...well mostly accurate....

So the first thing we did was decide that WE (Susan and I) wanted to go. We decided we'd go around June when the days were longest. We then asked each of the kids if THEY would like to go, dumb, dumb question... OK we're all going what do WE want to do???

Well actually before we get to that the first thing is make sure we ALL get passports as I was the only one that had one.  Of course it was REAL wise that we started early as James had a bit of a birth certificate issue.  For reasons unknown his birth wasn't legally registered until he was five(5), trying to get into kindergarten.  Looks kinda weird to the passport folks when your birth was registered in 1984 and you were born in1979... Needles to say it was a hassle and it did take several months, but it arrived just in time...

Back to what do you want to do in Europe.  Susan and I had decided that we'd fly into London then drive through Wales and catch a ferry to Dublin, the Republic or Ireland... hmmm no problem there. Rebecca decided that we should all go see the live play "Cats" while in London, then fly back through Paris to go to some cemetary where ????????? was buried... hmmm joys... Once James and Edward heard this, they jumped right on the bandwagon. talk as I might I couldn't talk them out of Paris, OR the cemetary...

We decided that we were going to stay in bed and breakfast inns for the entire stay. We made reservations at one in London well in advance and made a reservation in Dubln for one night. We purchased front row seats at about $80.00 each for "Cats" I scoffed at that too, but everyone else (Susan) that counts thought it would be OK...

In retrospec, all of the planning went amazingly well, we weren't stranded, weren't without a place to stay, NOTHING went seriously wrong, that may depend on ones perspetive, but from mine it went as smooth as anything I'd ever done.... NOW we wait.  Chapter 2 - The day arrives.....

cheers.