Travel Review: Luxury Ireland Vacation, Dublin, Cork, Whiskey Tasting, Pubs

The planning, reservation and service were top notch.  We did have some issues however.  Though we booked rooms over a year in advance, two of the hotels did not provide the type of room promised.  Our expectations were shattered  by the rooms received.  The hotels blamed it on a booking company working on behalf of our travel company.  We don't care where the blame lie, we were just severely disappointed. Our travel company paid for our dinner one of the nights to make up for it but it could not erase the disappointment  after having booked so far ahead and reviewing our expected rooms online beforehand.  The other disappointment was our driver.  This part of our travel is the most costly so of course we expected the best.  Our driver seemed unhappy in his job and that reflected on his service to us.  He was a good driver but a horrible guide.  He offered little most days in explaining what we were driving through and seemed most intent on getting us to and from our hotels each day as quickly as possible.  He was supposed to be flexible and drive us to un-walkable dinner reservations but instead told us to hire a taxi. He had a short fuse and sometimes remained silent.  He most times dictated our itinerary by his watch not our desires. One day he had a stand-off with another car coming uphill on a narrow road and refused to budge, making us extremely uncomfortable.  This is not luxury travel.  We could not wait to be out of that negative environment to be on our own.  But most of the hotels, the countryside and places they scheduled us to visit were fantastic. All dinner recommendations and reservations  were great and again our travel company's service was exceptional.