We leave for Ireland in 10 days

It's time to begin telling the story. It would be a shame if we left out any of the detail of the fiasco.

A year ago, we decided we wanted to go to Ireland for our annual trip. We have a special account into which all unexpected money is deposited so we could save up and pay for the trip in advance.

Tarzan, who, as many of you know who are regular readers of my blog, collects PPP's (poor pitiful people). He had a couple come into his office who fit the bill and they told him they were trying to start a travel agency. He said, "Hey my wife and I are going to Ireland next year. Would you like to put the trip together for us?"

That was the beginning of my woes. After many annoying conversations where they couldn't just give us choices, rather they flooded us with meaningless information and expected us to decipher their intent and make some kind of choice. We finally got our airplane tickets last year. When the tickets came, they arrived with a bill for the services of the travel agent and a charge they had put on our credit card to Travelocity. Now, you know the troubles I've seen, without my saying any more than that. Right? Oh, my, you don't even have a clue. I tried to put together how much they had charged us for the trip and when the payments had been made and found that not one of the letters from them was dated.

If it were not for my good friend Maria Hoffman, we would have arrived in Ireland with our schedule all wrong, no car rented, no way to get into a Bed and Breakfast, no idea of where to go or what to do. No idea of the best way to handle the exchange rate, etc. etc. etc.

We now have Emily Goldie, she is wonderful. Emily got us prepaid vouchers to use at the Bed and Breakfasts through the part of Ireland where we are staying. Without them, if we had been lucky enough to get a room, we would have paid double or triple the price. She was able to rent us a car (our previous agents told us they had not been agents long enough to get us the car rental and sent our money back to us--2 weeks before we were to leave). We got travel books and maps, oh, it is so nice to have someone who knows what they are doing helping you.

As of today, she is planning our cruise for 2009. We are going to Alaska, want to go? We can get a discount with 16 people in our group.