Jul 23, 2007
It's back! Ireland for $499, including airfare, accommodations, and a car
Throughout the 1990s. a well-regarded company known as Sceptre Ireland (or Sceptre Tours) was the source of amazing fall/winter air-and-land packages to the Emerald Isle. For as little as $499 per person, they flew you roundtrip to Shannon, placed you in a car with unlimited mileage for a week, and gave you a booklet of vouchers for six nights of bed-and-breakfast accommodations at your choice of several hundred homey guesthouses throughout Ireland.Then, mysteriously, Sceptre Ireland went upscale. They remained active as ever, but no longer advertised their air-and-car packages to the public, but seemed to focus instead (or so it seemed to me) on expensive, upscale hotels booked through travel agents.
Well, they've now returned to us common folk! In a startling statement, they've announced they will again be providing air-and-land packages to Ireland for $499 (in December, January and February) and for $599 in October and November. And ingredients will be better than ever. Instead of providing B&Bs at that price, they'll be putting you up in three- and four-star hotels serving full Irish breakfast every morning. And the $499 and $599 price will be available not simply to Aer Lingus passengers from New York, but for Ireland-loving types flying there from Boston, Chicago and Washington, D.C. (Aer Lingus will soon begin flying to Ireland from Washington, D.C.).
A couple of conditions: you'll pay $499 and $599 only if you book on the internet (www.sceptretours.com). You'll pay an extra $25 per person if you phone in to one of their live reservationists (tel. 800/221-0924) -- so be sure to use the internet only. Blackout dates: December 17-31. And your car will have manual transmission; an automatic will cost $79 more.
An off-season car trip through Ireland is one of the great delights of travel. And I have the word of the president of Sceptre Tours that if you yell loudly enough, he'll substitute quaintly-Irish B&Bs for those three-star and four-star hotels. At one such farmhouse B&B, the proprietor permitted my then-four-year-old granddaughter to gather the eggs that had been laid overnight and deliver them to his wife for transformation into a full Irish breakfast. It was a magical moment of travel.
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Fifty years ago, 
Arthur Frommer is generally acknowledged to be the nation's foremost travel authority. He is the founder of the
