Honeymoonin: Getting There (Part 1)

Hey hey heyyy! Pat and I weren't sure which trip to cover first so we decided to just dive right in and tackle our honeymoon. It will actually be closer to probably 3 or 4 posts between the both of us since we did so many things in such a short time. So buckle up!

First thing's first, I'll cover the where, when, why of it all. Pat and I have been lucky enough to travel to the Caribbean a handful of times, so we were looking for a new adventure. Europe had been something that we had talked about for awhile so it just made sense to drop the hammer fly over seas. Also turns out, September is peak hurricane season in the Caribbean and we weren't interested in floating/blowing away. So England and Ireland it was!

We decided to leave on Labor Day, 3 days after our wedding, because we honestly couldn't wait. I give credit to any couple that can leave the day after. I think we were both in a coma for the 48 hours after our big day. It also gave us time to prepare and shop for things that we needed, like rain jackets, since ya know, they're kind of important in Ireland.

Believe it or not, we booked our entire trip on Groupon. Our package included airfare, stay in B&B/hotel and an access pass to some pretty awesome museums/tourist destinations in both countries. If you've never booked a trip through Groupon, first things first, why do you hate bargains? And second, you'll notice there are only a select group of cities to depart from and Buffalo is rarely one of them. If you're in Western New York and willing to drive, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Toronto and JFK are great alternatives. If you're in LA, NYC, or Miami, screw you guys because you already have nice things. (Totally kidding, but also kind of not.) Another side note, when you book through Groupon, you actually book through a third party travel site. Our package was through Great Value Vacations and they were super helpful. They even let us extend the trip a few days for only a couple dollars more... Somehow? The only downfall of booking through Groupon is that you need to do all of the research yourself. We had 3.5 days in England and 4 days in Ireland with the option to see, do and stay wherever we wanted. After we both giddily talked about how cool it would be to see the London Bridge and the guards with those sick hats, we quickly realized that we didn't know much about England at all. Or Ireland for that matter.

GVV will give you a suggested itinerary for your trip, but then you're responsible for booking all of the hotels/bed and breakfasts/ stops along the way through several other third party websites. We definitely used the itinerary for reference but ultimately did our own thing. It felt good to know we planned the trip ourselves, but I'm not going to lie, we definitely started to think about how easy an an all-inclusive would have been after 10 hours of research.

Finding parking at/near JFK airport is actually surprisingly painless. I also might be saying this because Pat took care of it. We booked at an offsite lot called Bolt Parking to save money and to avoid the madness of the JFK terminals. Just make sure to do research and book ahead of time because some lots were full. Bolt offers a free shuttle to and from the airport and were so easy to use. After all was said and done, it came to around $10/day. I would highly recommend!

We flew Aer Lingus to England, and honestly, Pat will need to tell you about the experience because I took two Dramamine, washed them down with a Bloody Mary, and was passed out before takeoff.

We touched down in Heathrow International around 7 AM and took the free shuttle over to our rental car. We booked through Enterprise and they gave us a car that looked to be built for 2 small children. The car was a manual Honda Jazz (yes, the car was called the Jazz) and 1000% the cheapest option available. Luckily it was actually pretty spacious inside. Turns out we have a problem trying to cut corners on things we really need, but are willing to spend $40 on an in-flight wine & cheese pairing. (You just can't beat vacuum-sealed cheddar with a fresh glass of airplane wine.)

We finally hop in the car and Pat starts to mentally prepare for driving on the opposite side of the road, while simultaneously attempting to remember how to drive stick. Definitely not the best combination for driving in an unfamiliar place, so he decides to take a leisurely drive throughout the airport. UPDATE: there are NO leisurely drives through Heathrow Airport. After taking a quick right out of the rental car pickup, we found ourselves in a HIGH SPEED ROUND-A-BOUT with no warning. At this point I'm barely breathing, Pat is white-knuckling the steering wheel, and our GPS has decided to freak out. Needless to say I lost track of how many times we went around the circle. After a few near stall-outs later, we found our way to the thruway and were off to our first B&B in London!

This was a super long winded story about just getting to London (shocking) but I promise, Pat will get to the good stuff. Speaking of!! Pat will be debuting his first post next week!! Getttt readdddy 💃🏽

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