Triphap - Funny Travel Stories and Travel Horror Stories

When most people travel, they take the time to book hotel reservations. However, my friend Ashley and I were not most people many years ago, when we decided that backpacking through Ireland would be more fun if we "winged it."

Winging it, of course, meant that we'd each buy a one-way ticket to Dublin, and give ourselves ten days to get back to Bath, England, where we were enrolled in a study-abroad program. The plan was to visit Dublin, Galway, Cong (where they filmed “The Quiet Man” with John Wayne) and finally end things in Belfast, where we figured we could catch a flight back to England.

Unfortunately, Ireland had other plans for us, as nothing worked out the way we thought it would.

After getting stuck in Galway and Cong for about seven days (thanks to an erratic bus schedule that we couldn't figure out), we finally managed to nab a bus trip from Cong to Belfast via Dublin. The twelve hour bus ride started at ten in the morning, which means that we’d arrive in the heart of Belfast around ten at night.

Of course, like with all transport, the bus ran late, and we ended... read more >>

“’Ave you ‘ad a hard night on the drink then, young lady?” says the voice with the Irish accent for what seems like the fifteenth time.

I ignore him, and allow darkness to enclose me once again. But a set of fingers jabs into my breastbone, and I’m forced to gasp and rip my eyes open.

“Are you Irish or Spanish?” inquires another voice, and I suddenly see a plump man with a clipboard staring down at me. “Here for work or for study?”

“American,” I manage to hoarsely growl. “Here…for….vacation.”

“Oh no,” says the first man. “Well it’s only uphill from here! Tomorrow you’ll be out at Temple Bar enjoying a nice pint of Guinness.”

The thought of that thick, smelly beverage nauseates me in my thoroughly nauseous condition. I push myself upward, for I’m coughing and violently heaving again, with cold sweats running down my face.

“Bloody hell, the American’s ill again,” says the man with the clipboard, and he shoves a plastic bag under my tortured mouth.

I’m in a Dublin emergency room on the first day of my Easter holiday, having just spent the beginning of this semester as a study abroad student in Madrid, Spain. There’s some 24-hour stomach bug going around... read more >>

We were spending two weeks in Ireland on our honeymoon. We decided to go to the Emerald Isle when my fiancé (now husband) and I looked at each other and said, "I don’t want to go to a beach." Let it be said that neither of us are beach people, I happen to hate the sand and my husband (who is Irish) burns because of his fair complexion. Therefore, keeping this in mind, we decided to do something untraditional and head to Ireland, a place both of us had always been entranced by.

When we arrived in Dublin, we spent a few days there before renting a car and traveling cross country to Killarney on the western shore. Let me just make this comparison, if Dublin is New York, Killarney is the East Village. It’s a very trendy, cool locale, young and thriving with interesting people. However, in the mix of all of that is a group of Irish that have been there before Killarney was cool. Not that I’m calling this group “uncool,” they earn a certain distinction that no trendy “pub kid” could ever dream of having.

Let me explain, one afternoon, upon... read more >>