So, You Want to Travel?

I’ve got travel on my mind so I feel inclined to discuss it a little here. From our talks and ice breakers (yes, they’re here too) at the beginning of the semester, I quickly found that the majority of students go abroad to travel and see the world. For me, it was basically the same, although I had a particular interest in seeing Ireland itself in addition. Hopefully then, I can shed some light on travel out here on the Emerald Isle.

Four-Day Weekend

Assuming future semesters are similar to my own, the college advertises and encourages two times in particular for travel, although since you have every Friday off, short travel dates every weekend (class fieldtrips permitting) are not undoable. For us, we have a four-day weekend in October and all of Thanksgiving week off which lend themselves nicely to longer travel plans. I don’t know how the Spring schedule is set up but I would imagine it is similar with Spring Break.

Since the four-day weekend has now passed, I can discuss it with a little more certainty. I put off planning for it until about two weeks prior, which probably isn’t a good idea if you have more ambitious plans than I did. I couldn’t think of any particular travel destinations because all of the places I wanted to visit could also easily be done in a weekend and I didn’t want to waste the extra day. What I ended up doing is taking a short plane ride to Leeds, England to catch an all-day rock and metal festival. I knew nothing about Leeds beforehand so it was a little bit of a gamble, but I knew I would likely never see it otherwise so I didn’t care. It actually turned out pretty well (ignoring the fact that it rained the entire time I was there) and the festival was huge fun. If anyone is interested in music, Leeds seems to be a great city to visit. It is also littered with colleges so you are bound to meet other students. Note: I forgot my camera so please excuse the external images.

If you aren’t a music lover, my plans might seem dull so I will try to recall what I can remember of others’ travel plans. Some people went to Galway which is only a 3 hour bus ride from Dublin and a wicked fun city, some went to Barcelona, Spain which I’m told was also a fun city with great night life, awesome food, and warm weather, some went hiking in the Scottish highlands, some went to Norway and others to Italy. So if going to a music festival isn’t your thing, there are certainly other options available. Be creative.

Longer Weekend (Thanksgiving)

This is the week you came here for. We get an entire week (from Friday to Sunday the following week for a total of ten days) off and I’ll be damned if I’m not going to use it to travel. The week has not yet arrived so I can’t give any feedback on it yet but I certainly plan to when I get back. For now though, I can obviously talk about my plans and a little bit of the planning process for a big trip.

I am planning on making my trip with two other friends and although I can’t verify for sure yet, I would have to say making a group trip is a lot more fun than going solo. We have decided to sort of travel across northern Europe, beginning in Bruges, proceeding to Amsterdam, and finally landing in Prague before returning back to Dublin at the end of the week. Although it may sound ambitious and pricey, we have so far, in the final steps of the planning stage, managed to find an excellent schedule of relatively cheap transportation.

Before planning your trip, discuss your prospective destinations with the professors and staff over here; I can guarantee someone has been there and will give you useful feedback. Some cities sound a lot better than they really are. When you begin the planning process, look on the internet for guides and blogs of others who have made certain trips between two cities because you can gain a lot of useful transportation information from them. By doing this, we found an overnight bus that travels from Amsterdam to Prague a couple times a week and saved ourselves around $150 by not flying. On that same note, don’t set in stone the order in which you visit your destinations, it can be much cheaper to check every possibility. If you have the patience, try to check each mode of transportation. For longer trips, a plane will almost always be cheaper, but on occasion, some buses and trains will give you a better deal depending on the popularity of the trip.

If you want to visit England and Scotland, take a plane. Although there are ferries that run frequently between popular ports, you will spend a lot more using them in addition to busses and trains to get to your final destination than you will if you just take a direct flight. And when it comes to airlines, don’t assume Ryanair will always be the cheapest. A lot of times Aer Lingus will have better rates if you travel on the right days. Just make it a rule of thumb for your trips to look at all of the possibilities when it comes to transportation.