Cheers to 2022 – Our Annual Look Back Post
2022 Look Back
As we near the end of the year we wanted to take a moment to look back on 2022 and all the exciting things we have been up to!
THE TEAM
We have an amazing team here at Vintage Tea Trips and this year our team has really grown.
We started out strong with Anna joining us on board in January. In February the amazing duo Sarah and Sharon was formed back of house. April brought us the wonderful Selma and Niamh who joined us as on board hosts. In May, the lovely Monica turned the back of house duo into a trio and although young Ella was on board for her TY work experience she joined the team properly back in May! In August, in the midst of the summer madness, we gained two more marvellous onboard hosts – Nicole and Kiera. In November we formed another dynamic duo with Daniel and Marcos back of house. And last but not least Daniel C was delighted to welcome another man onto the bus when Adam joined us as a host at the end of November.
It’s so important to us that everyone gets the chance to bond, especially since our team on board and our back of house team rarely get the chance to mix.
We started out with a fun team building evening of samba drumming at the Temple Bar Hotel. The whole team got together to display our musical talents followed by a good few drinks at the hotel bar afterwards!
We celebrated our sixth birthday in September with a Walking food tour of Dublin! Our hosts gave the guide a run for her money as she took us round the city to spots many of us had not visited before! Potato cakes and Irish stew all around! We finished our day at the Stags head with many of us heading home at 6pm with 4 or 5 pints in the system!
Our most recent gathering was our Christmas party at the beginning of December! The team headed over to Six by Nico for an amazing 6 course New York style meal. It was so great to see everyone dressed to the nines in their Sunday best! After our civilised meal we headed over to Maneki for some epic karaoke! After we walked up what felt like 13 flights of stairs we had definitely earned the bucket of beer waiting for us at the top! After some amazing singing and some questionable dancing we were finally kicked out at 1 in the morning as the place was closing.
MEMORABLE PRIVATE HIRES
We have had a couple really interesting and unusual private hires this year!
We had a lovely trip out to Kildare Village for the promotion of Kilkenny Design’s new store. The team got to spend some time exploring the place and doing some of their own Christmas shopping on a gorgeous sunny day! Afterwards, as it was Culture Night, the team headed out to enjoy in the festivities and stumbled upon a pub quiz which they then proceeded to enter and come 2nd place – winning a round of drinks!
We have also done two lovely events with the team at Paint and Prosecco in Phoenix Park. One daytime trip and a lovely evening sunset trip. They were a delight to have on board and we look forward to hopefully working with them again in the future and seeing some more beautiful paintings!
The bus was also rented out by RTÉ for the day to shoot an episode of their short series ‘Love Bites’ starring Miss Ireland Pamela Uba and Shane Daniel Byrne. Our host Anna even had to step in to be part of the shoot making the food and taking the orders. Good to see that drama degree coming in handy!
We also got to share some amazing experiences with our lovely wedding bus Molly. We are always delighted to get the opportunity to be part of someone’s special day!
CORK TRIPS
We have done three cork trips this year! We sent Daniel and Victoria down in March. Victoria headed down again for the first week of July with Anna and in November we sent down Anna and Kiera!
We love our trips down to Cork! Working with Mags from The Pastry Fork and the Maldron on South Mall is always a delight and it’s been great to be getting to know the city again post covid!
In November, our girls braved a walk up the infamous Patricks Hill but we must say the view at the top was worth it!
The people of Cork City are always so welcoming and this year we got to venture even further! Heading out to Kinsale and beyond for some private bookings!
Anna and Kiera were lucky to get the opportunity to visit some nursing homes and take residents and carers out for a trip on Kitty! It was a really exciting experience for the team and the residents alike! One of the journeys took us up to the moving statue of ballinspittle where the residents said a quick prayer for Mary and had a sing-song on the way home!
One lady couldnt stop proclaiming; ‘I’m in heaven! Oh, I’m in heaven!’ It was a really great opportunity to hear the residents’ stories. One lovely man called Simon was very keen for chats! It was easy to understand why once we were told that in his 17 years in the nursing home this was only his 2nd outing!
We are looking forward to heading down to Cork again in the new year!
Catch us:
March 24th -26th
June 2nd – 4th
October 27th to 29th
SANTA TRIPS
We were so excited to invite Santa back on board this year! It was our first time running our Santa tours without the restriction of Covid and it has been great to see lots of returning faces!
For a lot of our team this is the first time they have gotten to experience our Christmas tours and it is great to see everyone getting into the Christmas spirit!
It’s not only kids that love the Santa tours! We get groups of adults on board all the time who are kids at heart and are ready to ease into the christmas season with some hot chocolate, a mince pie and some christmas sambos!
We launched our popular new tea towel collection this year including our exciting new Christmas tea towels which are the perfect Christmas gift for any loved ones along with our Christmas gift vouchers.
WORLD TRAVEL MARKET
We were delighted to get the opportunity to pop over to London for the World Travel Market this year! Ciara, Daniel and Anna headed over to represent the team!
It was a crazy couple of days and a great opportunity to network with companies overseas but also really get to know other small tourism businesses in Ireland and make connections. They had a lot of fun exploring what each country had to offer and even got to have a chat with the team from Red Bus Bistro exchange funny stories about our experiences aboard the vintage Routemasters!
Anna and Daniel also got to do a little bit of sightseeing by heading over to the Tower of London to do the infamous Beefeater Tour!
This year has been a really great one! Getting to know the world in its new post covid state but also focusing on all the great things we have learned to appreciate even more since the pandemic! We have lots of fun things planned for 2023 including a new team member that we are really excited for everyone to meet! I’ll give you a hint! She’s got 4 wheels and you’ll hear her before you see her!
We look forward to welcoming you back onboard in 2023!