Often, old ladies who travel leave behind old men who don’t.  Not permanently you understand, just long enough to miss them a little and have a few blissfully free days in the bargain.  In our case the old men are not entirely sorry to see us go, so it all works out.

A few tips when leaving the men behind:

1. Don’t go to the one place they have always wanted to go.  That’s just bad form.
2. Do try and plan your trip when they are doing something they like to do without you. Maybe camping with other old men, golfing or binge watching old episodes of “This Old House”
3. Don’t stay away so long that they lose interest in when you are coming back.

Or maybe take them with you once in a while as we did in May 2019.

Two of the old men had always wanted to see Ireland (see tip #1 above), so that became our destination.

Picking a location was easy – beautiful Dingle on the southwest coast.  And the VRBO rental, a good sized house on a large lot on the edge of Dingle Bay was a quick and painless decision.  Even the time, May, before hordes of tourists arrive and temperatures are pretty decent was a no brainer.

And then came the car rental discussion and things came to a grinding halt.