Tag Archives: Letterkenny

Singing the Blus in Dublin & Letterkenny

14 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Accommodations, Club Carson, Dublin, Europe, Ireland, Northern Ireland

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This is post seven of fourteen on our trip to Northern Ireland and Croatia, minus our mini Game of Thrones tour. Those posts can be found here.

Mrs. Selfish and I have a pretty clear hierarchy when it comes to hotel preferences: Hyatt, Hilton/Starwood/Marriott, IHG, other.  There are admittedly a ton of great hotels out there, but I’m pretty cheap when it comes down to it. I mean, why pay for a good (or even a great) hotel when you can get it for free?

Unfortunately, Northern Ireland wasn’t exactly swimming in hotel options, so I decided to try a new program: Club Carlson.

Mrs. Selfish and I each got the Club Carlson business cards back in the summer of 2013 because the sign-up bonus was decent: Gold status (which meant free internet & breakfast) 80,000 Club Carlson points and 40,000 on each anniversary. The real kicker, however, was the card’s #1 feature: redeem one award night, and get a second one free!

Since we were doing a lot of fast travel in Ireland, I decided to give Club Carlson a whirl, so I booked us for two nights in the Radisson Blu Royal Hotel Dublin and two nights in the Radisson Blu Letterkenny.

The Radisson Blu Royal Hotel Dublin

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Intro to Northern Ireland & Croatia

08 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by in Accommodations, Europe, Hilton, Ireland

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This is post one of fourteen on our trip to Northern Ireland and Croatia, minus our mini Game of Thrones tour. Those posts can be found here.

Since Mrs. Selfish is a huge fan of Game of Thrones, I decided to plan a trip for her birthday that would two new locations for us: Northern Ireland and Croatia. The trip spanned 18 days, which would have made for one MASSIVE trip report, so we decided to break it up into two separate trip reports for the sake of simplicity.

If you are interested in our Game of Thrones tour, you can find that report here. Otherwise, this trip report will cover the other things we saw and ate in Northern Ireland, Croatia, and Bosnia.

This trip was INSANE. Seriously crazy. For starters, we kicked off the trip with TWO REDEYES. Yeah. Two.

On US Airways, no less, not on a fancy European, Asian, or Middle Eastern carrier.

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First we flew from San Francisco to Charlotte on a redeye, landing in that city at 8 the following morning. After getting 5 hours of sleep at the Hyatt Place Charlotte, we ate our weight in Carolina BBQ before boarding our 7pm flight to Dublin.

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From there we made our way to the Radisson Blu Dublin, which I booked with 44,000 Club Carlson points for 2 nights. We spent 2 days trying to shake 8 hours of jetlag, hitting old favorites and new sites alike.

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The ever-so-swanky buffet at the Radisson Blu Dublin.

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