Quiz time! I bet you knew that Mr. Selfish was a big nerd, but did you know that MRS. Selfish was a big nerd too?

Yes, she’s taken her fair share of stupid pictures – I should say the lion’s share, actually, but does that really make her nerdy?

In a crazy twist, Mrs. Selfish is actually a HUGE fan of Game of Thrones. As in, she not only watches the show, but she reads the books too!

While watching the show we were completely blown away by the set. I mean, I know half of the show is CG, but the parts that aren’t are pretty friggin’ beautiful. After a good 10 minutes of googling, we found out that the show is primarily filmed in 3 locations:

1. Northern Ireland (where they film the North, duh).
2. Iceland (aka, the Wall, aka, the place nobody cares about).
3. Croatia (Kings Landing and Qarth – used to be Malta before the camera crew jacked some historical site, whoops).

So in honor of Mrs. Selfish’s birthday, I booked us on the Selfish’s Unofficial Game of Thrones Tour! Check it out.

For 50,000 American Airline miles and $10 each, we are flying in US Airways business class from San Francisco to Charlotte to Dublin. From there we’ll rent a car and drive to Belfast, Portrush, and Londonderry before heading back to Dublin.

I really loved driving through southern Ireland during our Selfish Year, so I’m interested in seeing how Northern Ireland is different. I’m particularly jazzed to hike Giant’s Causeway and the Dark Hedges among other places.

Totally not paying to wear stupid cloaks. Take that, Ireland.

Both Club Carlson and Hilton have a strong presence in Northern Ireland, so most of our stays will be in Radisson Blu hotels or Hilton properties in a combination of cash & points (with the exception of a B&B for 2 nights for Mrs. Selfish’s birthday). Total cost out of pocket for 8 nights is roughly $320, so we did alright there with an average of $40 a night.

From there we’ll hop on Europe’s crappiest airline, Ryanair, and make a B-line for Zadar, Croatia.

I’ve heard a ton of great things about Croatia in the last few years. The architecture looks Mediterranean, but different from Italy and Greece, the food sounds unique, and the sights look fantastic.

Some places of interest are Zadar’s walled city, the Plitvice Lake National Park, the Klis Fortress outside of Split, and Dubrovnik.

Unlike Northern Ireland, Croatia has almost no hotel chains in most of the country, but a VERY strong Airbnb presence. This is probably the first time I’ve seen Airbnb properties with over a hundred reviews, so we opted to rent apartments for this portion of the trip. We’re paying roughly $95 a night, which isn’t bad, but isn’t ideal.

I tried to book us on the most direct flight home, which means we ended up spending 52,000 Lufthansa miles (and an ungodly amount of $$ in taxes – something like $400+, bleh) to fly from Dubrovnik to Frankfurt to San Francisco in Lufthansa business class.

Hoping it’s worth the miles & $$!

So what do you guys think? Is their our nerdiest trip yet?

Does anyone have any tips for Northern Ireland or Croatia?