Ok, so I finally submitted the trip insurance claim in full and I’m requesting about €3500 in reimbursements. Trip delay and trip interruption each had a 3k limit and then there are medical expenses. I submitted about €250 in medical for the over the counter meds to treat symptoms, her official Covid test, all of the home Covid tests I bought to see if she could get a negative, plus the certificate of recovery cost.

I don’t know what falls under delay and what falls under interruption, but Covid is covered, so fingers crossed for a maximum amount.

Does anyone know if they are going to convert to USD for reimbursement?

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Getting back to the trip report: Limerick was cool. We felt it was the closest to an American city with conveniences (like a department store with a grocery inside?!? Yes!) and the shopping was good too. It was sort of on the dirty side but in that way, it reminded me a bit of downtown New Orleans (not French quarter). They had good restaurants, a French bakery/cafe (looked amazing but we didn’t indulge) and many speciality shops. (A lot of shoe stores and butchers and pharmacies).

Of course, we were getting tired by this point and were starting to focus on getting home— finding how to get my daughter a recovery certificate and for me to schedule my Covid test to return home. Luckily there was a chemist not even all the way around the block who did the Covid tests for €35.

We would have loved to have seen cliffs of Moher or the ring of Kerry, but as I mentioned before, a private driver was about €800, a rental car started at €199 a day and we both didn’t want to be masked in a bus for 10 hours. We chose to look forward to going back to Ireland with a better planned trip with hopefully no Covid.

I also looked into if there were any River Shannon tours. There was one, but in a different city and they were nice enough to email me the bus routes, but we just didn’t have the initiative at this point to actually go. (Another thing to save for next time).

(In Dublin, I had wanted to do the River Liffey boat tour, but I didn’t want to take the chance I would be contagious since it was mostly inside a boat).

Thursday, June 9, we took a taxi to Shannon Airport, which was great. That was a very calm experience. We were awake about 24 hours on the way home (that was so terrible… I hate staying up that long… it’s like I can feel my brain cells dying) and we arrived at home in the greater New Orleans area a little after 2 am.


The Irish people we encountered were wonderful. They seemed to keep a watch out for us and even shop owners in Kilkenny would ask where we were going next and then would give opinions or suggestions and one even corrected what I thought was an expected train route. He was correct— no train route how I thought it and he helped me figure it out. Very very nice and helpful.

I will definitely go back. My daughter still says she isn’t leaving North America, and I don’t blame her after this, but I definitely hope that feeling fades over time and that she can get back to the joy of exploring our world.