1. It is very easy to get to any of the ferry ports from Dublin, so that isn’t really an issue to consider.

2. The railpass gives you a 30% discount on ferries. This pasted from www.raileurope.com

3. Why would you want to spend days on the ferry/bus/train to get from Dublin to Amsterdam? Flying will be a lot faster and might even be considerably cheaper.

4. Is a 4 country railpass that includes Ireland really the best deal for your trip?

Wow, when we bought the eurail tickets, we were thinking there was a train from Ireland to Benelux, a train from Benelux to Germany, etc.. Eurail.com asked us four countries we wanted to visit, then it limited our options based on the countries we picked. So we thought there were only direct trains to each station. How does it work then? Why would they offer Ireland?

Thank you very very much,
Doug and Lorrie – We’re lost

Eurail considers countries to be “bordering” if they are connected by a ferry. Ireland is an island… They offer Ireland because you can use the railpass on any train in Republic of Ireland and you can get directly to France on a ferry.

Mark this one up to experience and find cheap flights to/from Ireland.

There are four of us in the family and we are moving to Ireland from US. From London, is it advisable to take the train with our luggage? Or are we better of to book for a connecting flight from London to Ireland?

1. Is there a reason you are flying to London? There are lots of flight options from the US to Shannon or Dublin — often cheaper than flying to London.
2. Since you’ll have lots of gear, it’s probably better to try to check it all straight through. The less you have to deal with it the better. Bus or train into London, perhaps the tube to get to the appropriate train station, train to ferry port, connection to ferry, ferry and then DART or whatever to Dublin or wherever you’re going is a lot of luggage handling. It could also involve an overnight somewhere in route.

My suggestions, in order:
1. Fly to Ireland
2. Book the connection through London on a single ticket so somebody else is dealing with your luggage.
3. Buy a plane ticket from Heathrow (or whichever London airport you land at) to Ireland — be sure to check the baggage limits as the overweight fees on many of the bargain airlines are a killer.
4. Any other option.

Check our “cheap flights” forum for more tips and help.

Thank you so much!