Ireland - Day 7

Today we were supposed to drive from Killarney to Cong for our stay at Ashford Castle.  Last night Clark and I were sitting in our hotel room and he blurted out, "let's go to London"!  That's when the travel consultant in me kicked in.  Within in a few minutes I had booked us a hotel at a sold out location using my Virtuoso contacts, booked airfare between Cork and London, changed our rental at Hertz so we could drop off our car in Cork instead of Dublin, arranged transportation in London and canceled our stay at Ashford Castle and our one night at the airport in London.  These are the things a professional travel consultant can do for you at the spur of the moment.

I want to say thanks to Joanne Heathcote at JH Hotels for finding us a room at a great hotel, the Soho Hotel when the hotel was booked to near capacity.  I also want to mention that Hertz Ireland has been a great car rental company to work with.  Great staff, good cars, no hassles.  When I called to ask about changing my return city the response was, no problem, just return it with a full tank.  I know this might be unique to Ireland, small island country, easy to move vehicles around, but it was still refreshing.

So now we get to end our trip with a little bit of city excitement.  Of course I didn't pack for London so it means we get to do a little bit of shopping!  The new musical Priscilla Queen of the Desert is playing, so hopefully we can get tickets.

I'm blogging from the airport in Cork, it's a new facility, very nice, lots of European connections, I would highly recommend flying out of Cork if you are continuing on to another European city.