Reply to Rita

Dear Rita

Thank you for your comments and i can only say that touring with you has always been a pleasure. Your love for Ireland, and especially rural Ireland, has always made my touring easy as i never tire of our unspoiled countryside. The granite mountains and glimmering lakes of Connemara, the limestone hills of county Clare and its awesome cliffs of Moher, the sandstone mountains and glacial lakes of Killarney in county Kerry and the rugged peninsulas of Dingle and Iveragh and Beara. Then you can add in the beauty of Kinsale and Cobh and the south coast and the islands of Aran and Achill....i could go on. How could you ever get bored with all of this. My job is a pleasure and especially when i witness the affect it has on those who appreciate the peace and quiet and beauty of the countryside. The great friends i have made i really do cherish and you are right up there at the top. There is a song called "Come back to Erin" and i think i could sing that for you. Thanks again.....and keep coming back here also.

Tips re car and driver, chauffeur and guide

There are many things you need to be sure about before you choose your car and driver or your personal chauffeur and car. I would advise that you keep in mind the following when doing so. Your holiday is important to you and you must be comfortable when sharing it with somebody else such as a driver or guide. You must not feel that you are restricted in any way. From my own experience i have a good idea by now how to make sure that my fellow travelers are aware of how i operate before they ever get to Ireland. I do this mainly by supplying them with the e-mail addresses of people who have traveled with me in the past. Sometimes they even get to talk to these people on the phone and this helps them to ask the kind of questions that they might find embarrassing if they had to ask me directly. They may feel for instance that they have to do everything with me such as eating in the evening or going for a drink or whatever. This is not the case at all. I allow my clients to have all the private time they need but i might occasionally dine out with them if they ask me to. We all need our space and i am no different.
The first thing to look for when choosing your Chauffeur is
1) Is the company to be found on any of our Irish tourist board sites. I am to be found on the tourists board's Ireland West site and indeed i am a member of Ireland West. There are a lot of con artists around and Ireland is no different. You must be sure that they are properly insured to carry passengers and that the insurance covers both you personally and also your luggage. Anybody can have a web-site and paper never refuses ink.
2) Do you know if they have more than one driver and have you any idea who you may be getting as your driver. I work alone so you know from the start that it is me you are dealing with and whatever i say and agree i will be delivering personally. This again can be verified by the contacts i will give you.
3) How experienced is your driver? Is he insured properly?What kind of background has he got? What kind of education has he had?
Before i went into this business i worked with an Irish oil company and traveled all over the country. The business was a family run business and before entering this business i was in the entertainment business and had worked in both Ireland and England. I know my country, i have a very broad education and i know its history, its culture, its politics and i have a good general knowledge of world affairs. It is amazing just how varied the conversation can be when traveling.
4) Does your driver drink and smoke? I have nothing against people who drink moderately or who smoke in areas where they are not a problem to anybody else but i am totally against anybody driving who has had a drink ...or a heavy session the night before. Not only can alcohol be still present in the system in levels above the legal limit but the smell in the car can be unacceptable sometimes. I neither drink nor smoke but i have no problem with my clients having one.
5) When it comes to price you need to be sure that everything has been disclosed. Are there any hidden charges or taxes? Are there a specific number of hours every day and if you exceed that will you be charged extra? Is the accommodation up to scratch? The hotels may look fine but what kind of rooms are you getting? All hotels have good and not so good rooms. You need to be sure. When i quote a price then that is it. There is nothing extra added unless there are changes made to the plan. I do not work on a specific number of hours and some days i have to put in a lot extra as people may want to be driven out for a meal and collected afterwards or maybe go to a show and possibly collected afterwards. Sometimes i go above and beyond the call of duty but i am also very mindful of my clients and i make sure that i do not overdo things. I always feel that one of the flaws in the tour group type of holiday is that they pack too much into their programs in order to make them look more attractive and people end up feeling like hamsters on a wheel. With a personal chauffeur/driver you have that flexibility that you can call it a day whenever you like.
I also know all the best places to eat, with the best value, and the best pubs around. I know where you can get the best value shopping and i know the places to avoid.
My price covers car and driver costs, accommodation with full breakfast, and if there is anything else added it is clearly specified. I never include meals as i feel that people much prefer to do their own thing when it comes to eating. However i will recommend when asked. In this business you need to be a jack of all trades.
All the accommodation i use is Irish Tourist board approved and i get better rooms at a better rate because i always use the same premises and have done for years.
I know that there are always other questions that people like to ask and if you have one then just post your comment and i will do my best to clarify it for you.
Let me add finally that the one thing that makes me better than average at this job is that i have a great love for my country and a great love for people in general. To be of service to others is always a privilege and when i see people having a great time it does my heart good.
Now i better get on with my housework....my wife is out shopping today and my duties include preparing a nice meal for her when she comes in from the cold. Lucky me.
I look forward to your comments.

Chauffeur recommended on Trip Advisor

Trip advisor are widely used, and wisely used, by many people who are looking for a Car and Driver in Ireland, Chauffeur guide, a tour guide, to take care of them when they come to Ireland. I find that as a result of being recommended there i get a lot of enquiries for my service. They offer a great service and provide a lot of good and reliable information and it is a site i would highly recommend myself. Do not be afraid to ask me for assistance if you feel the need.

Ireland West...Shannon airport

When traveling to the west of Ireland Shannon airport is the airport to choose. It is located in a remote area so there are no traffic problems either entering or exiting the airport. It is also a small and compact airport and there are no great queues either checking in or exiting. On leaving the airport terminal building the car park is right there in front of you and you can be in your car in a matter of minutes. The restaurant there is great and you can have a really good Irish breakfast or go the healthy route and have a selection of options. Any time i am traveling, no matter to where, i try to use Shannon and for someone like me living in the west of Ireland it is a wonderful asset. Getting in and out of Dublin is difficult never mind getting in and out of Dublin airport. Long live the regional airports and long live Shannon. If you are traveling to the far south of the country then Cork is your option. This is another small regional airport and located just on the outskirts of Cork city. It is not quiet as accessible as Shannon but it is once again better than Dublin.
If you wish to include Dublin in your trip to Ireland and also the west then fly into either Dublin or Shannon on your way in and leave from the other one on your way back. Just make sure that you check the flight for any stop-overs as they can vary from day to day and you can avoid delays by picking your days correctly. I hope this helps you with your plans.

Dave

Have yopu a question for me? It does not cost you.

Recipes and Memories

Today i have exciting news. My dear friend, Faye Callahan, has just had her new book, Recipes and Memories, published and i personally cannot wait to get my hands on it. It contains simple old fashioned recipes gathered from her grand-mother's and mother's cooking along with other ones from friends etc. I have vivid and fond memories of the wonderful simple dishes i relished as a child and would love to have the recipes for them now. I am sure that Faye's will be special and i really look forward to her grand-mother's recipe for sweet potato pudding. It sounds delicious. Well done Faye.
Faye and her wonderful husband Sonny traveled with me back in 2004 and what lovely memories i have of that great adventure. I will try to get Faye to tell us more about her book herself and how we can get copies.

Car with driver Ireland

Rita posted car with driver when she searched for me....and was'nt i lucky that she found me. Thanks Rita....i take note. I hope to keep my blog updated so keep checking in and you just might find it interesting. Let your friends know also.

Thanks Aaron....private guide Ireland sounds good. I am glad that you enjoyed my reminiscences and there are a lot of things about the old times that i really do miss. It is still a lovely world but we have to learn how to look after it and cherish it. I know that both you and Barbara and understand where i am coming from.
Your pal

Dave

Car and Driver Ireland

I have a question. When people in the USA are looking for someone to take them around during their visit Ireland what do they Google?
Car and Driver Ireland
Chauffeur Ireland
Tour operator Ireland
Tour Guide Ireland
or what?
Your terminology does differ from ours and it is useful for me to know what you would use when entering my information for prospective clients. Your assistance with this would be much appreciated.
What a weekend we have had here. First of all our rugby team won the home championship series for the first time in 61 years. In order to win the championship you have to beat all the other countries. That is not an easy thing to do....to conquer England, France, Italy, Scotland and Wales without a loss to any of them. These teams comprise the cream of the Northern hemisphere and we have come so near so many times only to fall painfully short. Yesterday we finally made it....by the skin of our teeth. It would have been a tragedy if we had not won as we were the better team but due to the enormity of the occasion we made many uncharacteristic mistakes and at the very death gave away a penalty which would have cost us the match had it gone over. Fortunately the kick was missed and the final whistle was blown and we were crowned champions at last. When you consider the size of our country and the small number of players we have compared to the big nations it is a tremendous achievement. Well done Ireland.
Then last evening there was a world title fight in Dublin between our Bernard Dunne and Cordova from Panama, the reigning world champion. Maybe the rugby boys inspired Dunne as he fought the fight of his life and knocked the champ out in the 11th round. He was nearly knocked out himself in the 5th but somehow managed to survive and how he managed to go on until the 11th is nothing short of a miracle. He did and we now have a world champ. Well done Bernard Dunne.
Today the drop in temperature is noticeable but the sun is shining and it is dry so no complaints. At the moment i am busy dealing with enquiries for the months ahead and i am looking forward to making many new friends this year. Please feel free to post a comment by clicking on comment.

Dave

The Emerald Isle never looked better than it did today. I was fortunate enough to be able to play a round of golf at Galway Golf Club where the first fairway runs down into the sea. The Bay was calm with barely a ripple and the Clare hills were a sight to behold. The Aran islands lay in a heat haze at the mouth of the bay and if you did not know better you would have thought it was June or July. It was just a wonderful day and the forecast at the moment is for more of the same. My chauffeurdrive business would never keep up with the demand if we had weather like this all of the time as so many people want a car and driver to escort them during their Irish holiday. Today was a day that i was glad i was not working as i felt like i was on holiday myself. When we get this kind of weather in Ireland, and we do occasionally, there is nowhere on earth more pleasant as it never gets too hot and the air is always so clean and fresh. Many forecasters are predicting a good Summer this year. Maybe this is the year to come to Ireland.

What a great day to have a birthday....happy birthday Rita. You are also blessed that you can take off 6 hours for the time difference. xxx

Well here i am at last...totally exhausted... after spending the last few hours entertaining the old folks in a nursing home. They love music and it is nice to be able to play for them.
First of all let me wish all my friends, old and new, a happy St Patrick's day. The weather here today is like a Summer's day and is most unusual for mid March. What a wonderful day for the parades. My memories of the parades are more of the wild, wet, or freezing days when i was in short pants and a white shirt standing in the queue waiting for the parade to start. We had to parade with our school and i have no fond memories of a day like today. There was always a delay in starting the parade and it seemed like forever as we stood there shivering not daring to complain. The parading soldiers were what always got my attention. The army pipe band, and maybe a few army trucks or armoured cars were also exciting for kids like us. Of course we had been to mass earlier and the churches would always be packed to the doors. There would even have been people standing outside the doors, and it was a great occasions.
We are all worried about this recession today,but in those days we had a lot less than they have now and we never noticed. Life was good. There were not the same luxuries then as people have now but when we did get something nice it was a real treat. Maybe a few sweets on a Sunday, and how good they tasted. Bring a kid into a shop today and show him a display of sweets and he will find it hard to pick something that he likes. Give him forty birthday or Christmas presents and he is still looking for the missing one....and he does not know what that is either. Give him pizza and he wants a burger...give him a burger and he wants something else....no wonder we have problems. In my day you ate what you got and you were glad of it. If you did not eat it, you stayed at the table until you did while the others who were finished went out to play. You were not long after them. And when you played it was outside in the fresh air...not stuck in front of a telly or a computer or on your phone texting. Maybe you had a ball and a hurley or maybe you just played some game that you invented yourself. Our imaginations were alive and well, and we used them. We were healthy and we were tough and most of the time we did what we were told. If we did anything wrong it was a very minor offence and if we were caught we paid the price......we were grounded. In my home there was no physical punishment and it was not needed.We respected our parents and we respected our neighbours and they were always Mr or Mrs whatever. I never in my wildest imaginings thought that i would live to see the day when the elderly would be attacked or abused by anybody. I never heard a young person verbally abuse an older person let alone attack them. Maybe the world needs this shake-up....maybe our young people need to learn how to provide for themselves like they did in my time and maybe we need to help them to see that. Parents pay their college fees....we went to England in the Summer and worked on the buses or the building sites and paid for it ourselves because our parents did not have the money and the question of them paying for that never arose. As for getting the deposit for a house off your parents.....that would have been ridiculous to even imagine. Of course it is wonderful to be able to help but is it good for them if they can at least help in some way themselves? And how many kids will pay back what they have been given by parents who have left themselves without for years? Get real....they will not be able to afford it because they will be too busy buying all the things that we never could afford...and maybe still cannot afford. Maybe we need this shake-up. The meal you earn with your own hands tastes so much better.
Why this sudden bout of nostalgia? Well this morning i was looking at a photo of myself and my older brother which was taken when i was about nine or ten years of age. He would have been fourteen maybe. He had his arm around my shoulders as we stood together on top of the cliffs on the Aran Islands at Dun Aengus fort. I was wearing my little corduroy suit...short pants and zipped up jacket...he had long pants ...which would one day be mine...and i could not wait to get them. What was amazing about that photo? We were happy...really happy. We were on holidays and staying with the local curate on the island....for free. He was my Mom's cousin and what a lovely man he was. He was a priest...and like so many other priests...a good priest. I always assumed that he would go straight to heaven...and now i believe that that is where he is today. His BSA Bantam motor bike was the only petrol engine on the island and he used to carry four of us on the bike....all together. When we were not on the bike we were on a donkey...they were all over the place and you just jumped on the first one that came your way. What a wonderful time we had. Would you trade that for phones and computers and gameboys and ipods and whatever else that they have now? Not me pal. And when we were finished playing, we went in for our dinner and we were starving. We ate plain, but we ate well....plenty of potatoes and veg....meat and fish and eggs. Porridge in the morning...and home made bread. I can still smell that.....the butter melting on it when you cut it fresh from the oven. My mother telling us that we would get a pain in our bellies eating it hot....but who cared...it was divine. We lived the simple life...maybe a little like St Patrick had to live, but i am sure a lot better. But he left us a message of hope. He left us rules to live by....to love our neighbour and to put our trust in God when things were not too good. We had a healthy fear of doing wrong. There were things that were called sins and people were not afraid to mention them. There was a price to be paid. There was a life hereafter.....and death was not the end of it all....and still is not.
Today St Patrick is with us again and i wonder what he sees. I am sure that he understands better than we do what is going on and i am sure that he knows that all will be well. I am sure that he knows that when we tire of messing things up that we will get back on the right road.
As i tour Ireland i cannot escape the reminders of the great men and women who carried the message brought to us by this great man. The ruins of old abbeys and monasteries....the high crosses....the offshore island retreats....the great mountain of St Patrick...Croagh Patrick. These reminders help me to focus on what really matters in this life and what it is all about. Forget your so called recessions and think of the poor in the third world who have never eaten even one decent dinner. They would take a small plate-full before they would take your luxury car or your boat or your holiday home. Have we ever really known hardship like that?
Ireland today is still a wonderful place to be and our Irish people still have that warmth about them. Most of our young people will be fine despite what they have to cope with in this modern world. We are fortunate to have peace in our country and our crime rate is not nearly as bad as many other countries. People come to Ireland looking for a car and driver...a chauffeur driven tour....a stree free holiday....and they come to mebecause that is the service i provide and i become a part of their excitement and enjoyment as we tour this beautiful country. I share my experience and we talk about anything and everything. I love what i do and i try to do it well and i have made so many friends doing just that.
To all those friends today i say...thank you sincerely for allowing me to be a part of your lives...and may the blessings of St Patrick be on all of you today.
If you wish to share anything with me please fell free to comment. have a great St Patrick'e day.

I am really sorry for not keeping my blog up to date but there is somebody in my wife's family who is not well and we have been totally taken up with this matter. Otherwise, all is well and i will be posting again later today with regard to St Patrick's day.... where i am.....in the beautiful west of Ireland.
Back later

Dave

Back home again

Well here i am again after my trip away for a few days. It was not pleasant as it concerned a visit to a sick relative and that can be hard. I will be posting over the next few days when i catch up with things but if anybody has any messages for me in the meantime just please post them. I will reply as soon as i get time.
Take care for now.

Busy week ahead

I am going to be very busy for the rest of this week, and into the early part of next week, so i will not be posting after today. Have a nice week and if you want to leave me any message in the meantime i will get back to you when i return.

Dave

Well i did say that the guys were hard at work and if you played golf like these guys did then you would find that it was hard work.
Actually they were all competent golfers and this photo was taken in front of the Tralee Golf Club clubhouse. This is a wonderful course and not quiet as expensive as some of the other ones. Needless to say they did have a great time and loved the course. There were other golf days with this group but more about that at some other time.

What a life

These four ladies were having a great time on the Dingle peninsula while their poor husbands were hard at work. This picture was taken at the harbour in Dingle itself. Note the two currachs in the background (native boats used by the fishermen on the west coast). The crews in these boats on this day were actually women. This actually works a lot better than Weightwatchers ....and there is no charge.
This was a very special group and we had a barrell of laughs.

Enough is enough Aaron. Well he was getting to me a little and driving on Irish roads is difficult enough. Note the liquid sunshine on the windshield? I always say Ireland is always beautiful ....it is just that some days she wears a different dress.
I still look over my shoulder sometimes to see if he is still there.....and i hope that one day i find that he is. We had great fun guys and i hope that we can do it all again sometime.

This is Dave the leprechaun while touring with Aaron and Barbara, Larry and Ginna in Co Kerry. This photo was taken at Ladies View high in the mountains on the Ring of Kerry. This leprechaun had a lot of fun with this group.

Leon and Kate on the Ring

I love this photo of my dear friends Leon and Kate from Colorado who toured with me in 2006. The Ring of Kerry is one of Ireland's most popular scenic drives and takes you all the way around the Iveragh peninsula. The town of Waterville was one of Charlie Chaplin's favourite holiday destinations and this statue commerates this great comedian and star of the silent era. Can you guess which one is Charlie?