Plan our trip to Ireland for us

[v]

In September.

We will arrive in Dublin on Friday morning (jet lagged and in need of a nap, so count Friday as a half day) and will be flying out of Shannon at noon the following Sunday.  So we have 8.5 days/9 nights to do stuff. 

I probably want to head out of Dublin by Sunday ... Monday at the latest (I've been there before and don't feel like I need to spend time there, but my husband has never been -- so we'll go to the highlights but will be quick).  Then I'd like to head to the west coast.

Where would you go and for how many days/nights in each place?

Thanks!

[winnied]

We didn't go east of Cork but here's what we did in March:

Day 1: Fly into Shannon, Cliffs of Moher, and Galway
Day 2: Drive around Connemara, including Kylemore Abbey
Day 3: Drive to Cork
Day 4: Cork County, including the cute town of Cobh, drive to Killarney
Day 5: Killarney National Park & Drive to Kenmare
Day 6: Ring of Kerry, stay in Dingle
Day 7: Ring of Dingle and stay at Shannon airport

We stayed mostly in B&Bs and one or two hotels. We did a lot of the "Wild Atlantic" route and I highly recommend it.

We had a great time. The one thing we were disappointed with was the town of Killarney. It's so touristy that it kind of bummed us out.

[erbear]

Apr 21, 2015 18:22:11 GMT -5 @mama2b said:

We went from Shannon to Dublin.
Day 1 Cliffs of Moher and Doolin (B&B and pub)
Day 2 and 3 Killarney (B&B). Explored the town and beautiful state park with ruins of a castle and church and then an intact estate where Queens/VIP of the past stayed.
Day 4 and 5 Blarney Castle on the way to Waterford. Next day Waterford factory tour. (Stayed at an inn on a golf course).

Day 6 Stayed an hour outside Dublin at a castle. Saw a wedding party reminiscent of Four Weddings and a Funeral!

Day 7-8 Dublin. Stayed at a boutique hotel. Guiness tour. Exploring the city.

Pretty much this, though we were there for a wedding. We didn't do Blarney but we did a few days in Galway and I loved it. The  Dingle PEninsula or the Ring of Kerry was a must.

mama2b, were you at Gus O'Connors in Doolin?

[erbear]

Apr 21, 2015 20:37:15 GMT -5 @mama2b said:

erbear We stayed at Churchfield B&B in Doolin. Maeve Fitzgerald was the name of the sweet lady who ran the place and checked us in. She told us that since we had just gotten off an overnight flight we were tired and ordered us to nap. Said she would wake us up when it was time to go to the pubs, and she did!

I mean the pub

My friend's family owns it and I'm always excited when people go there.

[rubytue]

We did in an out of Shannon, but this was our trip:
Day 1: arrive Shannon, visit Bunratty. Napped in parking lot. Stayed in a castle in Tralee.
Day 2: Tralee to Derrynane in ring of Kerry. Stayed in Derrynane hotel
Day 3: hiking the beach out to the chapel ruins near Derrynane house. Drove rest of ring of Kerry to Killarney. We seriously considered Skellig Michael, but I hate ledges so we bailed on it
Day 4: puttering around Killarney. Muckross house, Ross castle, the boat from the castle to the island
Day 5: Killarney to Galway via Adare and Portmagee. Went to the castles at both stops. Also wandered around the estate grounds in Adare thanks to a nice local that gave us the gate code
Day 6: full day in Galway. Wonderful!
Day 7: Aran islands. Stayed in Galaxy.
Day 8: Galway to Shannon via Ailwe cave for a hawk walk, puttering around the burren, and, or course, the cliffs of Moher.


The whole thing was awesome. I loved that we spent 2 days on the ring of Kerry. We were able to get out a lot, plus do the extra Skellig ring. We loved Galway and hanging in the pubs there. The hawk walk was so awesome, and we had a groupon

I wish we had known it would be so warm and sunny. We should have gotten out on a boat, but I was so nervous about the weather + North Atlantic so I didn't make reservations. And then, of course, we couldn't get a last minute kayak or fishing trip.

Edit: please forgive spellings. We made up pronunciations, and my spelling on some of these is probably closer to what we called things than reality.

[lifeisinteresting]

Apr 21, 2015 18:10:11 GMT -5 v said:

In September.

We will arrive in Dublin on Friday morning (jet lagged and in need of a nap, so count Friday as a half day) and will be flying out of Shannon at noon the following Sunday.  So we have 8.5 days/9 nights to do stuff. 

I probably want to head out of Dublin by Sunday ... Monday at the latest (I've been there before and don't feel like I need to spend time there, but my husband has never been -- so we'll go to the highlights but will be quick).  Then I'd like to head to the west coast.

Where would you go and for how many days/nights in each place?

Thanks!

Double and triple driving times. The roads are tiny, crazy tiny.
Go to ring of kelly, ring of dingle ( awesome) skelig island. Stay at sheen falls if possible.
Other tip but probably too lAte for you. We did that too, flew into Shannon and out of Dublin. It's way too much ground to cover and the entire trip was rushed. Next time we will stay in the ring of dingle Area.

Oh and it rained every single day. Bring your own poncho and water repellant shoes.

Oh take a plan to the Aryan islands- awesome to explore!

[v]

Thanks, everyone (and please keep it coming!)

lifeisinteresting, I'd love to skip Dublin and fly in and out of Shannon, but my husband really wants to go to Dublin. I'll try one more time to convince him before we book our flights, but I really think it is a losing battle. There's always a next time to see the stuff we miss...

[nomad100]

I take it you are driving? The first time I went, I was by myself and used this book Frommer's Ireland's Best-Loved Driving Tours www.amazon.com/Frommers-Irelands-Best-Loved-Driving-Tours/dp/0471776513/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429705905&sr=8-1&keywords=ireland%27s+best+loved+driving+tours as my guide.

Started in Dublin and headed west the same day, ended up in Dublin for my last 2 nights.  Worked my way around the South coast over the next week.

It has been a while so I would have to go back to my journals to see my exact route.

Some things I do remember:
Dingle Peninsula is less crowded than the Ring of Kerry.  
Ask locals what they would suggest visiting.
I didn't have any reservations for places to stay except in Dublin since I wanted to do the B&B thing and wasn't sure where I would end up. It worked out just fine. In small towns, I just stopped at the local pub and asked what was the best place to stay.  A couple of times the bar tender called and got me a room. 

And my most surreal experience? Sitting in a little pub on the west coast somewhere, surrounded by a bunch of old men speaking Gaelic (I was the only female and the only one under 40 in the pub), listening to Shania Twain.  The bartender and I had a good laugh about that one.

[Susie]

Places I'd recommend visiting:

Inis Mor - Aran Islands (we got there via a ferry from Rossaveal, just west of Galway)






A little driving tour through Connemara:


We spent a couple nights in Doolin on both of my trips.  Great pub music there, and near the Cliffs of Moher.  We stayed here both times: http://www.halfdoordoolin.com - obviously I liked it the first time.

Dingle Peninsula (we stayed in Dingle town):


Kenmare was a really cute town near Killarney National Park, much more picturesque than Killarney itself.  Virginia's is the B&B where we stayed.


Cobh was pretty cool to visit briefly.  We stayed in Kinsale (which I was meh about) but Cobh was the last port of call for the Titanic and also the port that my relatives emigrated through, so it was neat to visit.  It was a little eerie.  


As an alternative to Inis Mor, you can also take a ferry from Doolin to Inis Orr, one of the smaller Aran Islands.  The crossing tends to be a little rougher though (than the one from Rossaveal) and you miss Dun Aenghus, the ring fort.

Inis Orr has a shipwreck on it:

[drloretta]

We'll ser you there!

Our current plan is to rent a place in Killarney and do day trips. We're thinking Dingle, Cobh, maybe Aran Islands, possibly someplace northwest. It's all a loose itinerary at the moment

[rubytue]

Oh, in my comments about the weather, I forgot to give context. We were there is early September last year. We expected cool, but I really regretted not bringing sandals. It was jeans/t-shirt weather with maybe a hoodie in morning/evening.

[UnderProtest]

I loved taking a jaunting car trip through the Gap of Dunloe right outside of Killarney. We stayed at the Europe Hotel & Spa right on Lake Leane and it was great. We also loved the Castlemartyr nearish Cork. The drive from Cork to Killarney was amazing, but scary (small roads and some big cars). We did go on the Guiness tour but it wasn't that exciting to me as a non-beer drinker, but the view from the bar at the top was great.

[sporky]

We did a south-western route from Dublin to Shannon when we went a few years ago. Here was our itinerary:
Day 1 Dublin
Day 2 Dublin
Day 3 grab rental car and hit Powerscourt Gardens and Glendalough on the way to Kilkenny
Day 4 Kilkenny, visit the Rock of Cashel and Cahir Castle on the way to Lismore (in Waterford Co.)
Day 5 Ardmore and Blarney before staying the night in Kinsale
Day 6 visit the Drombeg stone circle on the way to Mizen Head then on to Tralee
Day 7 drive around the Dingle Peninsula, overnight in Newmarket-on-Fergus
Day 8 visit a few last castles and the Cliffs of Moher, before overnighting in Newmarket-on-Fergus again
Day 9 fly home

If I were doing a a similar route again, I would spend 2-3 nights in Dublin, 2 nights in Kilkenny, 2 nights in Dingle, 2 nights in Galway

[v]

This is really truly, very helpful. Thanks everyone.  (But feel free to keep it coming!)

[sporky]

Also, this site will give you accurate driving times for help in planning. Everyone kept talking about doubling drive times when we went, but we found their sites to be bang on, if not a bit conservative.

www.theaa.ie/routes/

[kellygreen]

Apr 21, 2015 18:10:11 GMT -5 v said:

In September.

We will arrive in Dublin on Friday morning (jet lagged and in need of a nap, so count Friday as a half day) and will be flying out of Shannon at noon the following Sunday.  So we have 8.5 days/9 nights to do stuff. 

I probably want to head out of Dublin by Sunday ... Monday at the latest (I've been there before and don't feel like I need to spend time there, but my husband has never been -- so we'll go to the highlights but will be quick).  Then I'd like to head to the west coast.

Where would you go and for how many days/nights in each place?

Thanks!

You decided against national parks out West?

[v]

Apr 22, 2015 10:15:54 GMT -5 kellygreen said:

Apr 21, 2015 18:10:11 GMT -5 v said:

In September.

We will arrive in Dublin on Friday morning (jet lagged and in need of a nap, so count Friday as a half day) and will be flying out of Shannon at noon the following Sunday.  So we have 8.5 days/9 nights to do stuff. 

I probably want to head out of Dublin by Sunday ... Monday at the latest (I've been there before and don't feel like I need to spend time there, but my husband has never been -- so we'll go to the highlights but will be quick).  Then I'd like to head to the west coast.

Where would you go and for how many days/nights in each place?

Thanks!

You decided against national parks out West?

We decided against national parks out west after we decided against Germany.  We've been all over the place on this September vacation plan!  We nixed Germany because we want to go to Munich but couldn't get around Oktoberfest and then we nixed the national parks because it seemed too likely that things would be shut down by late September (particularly in Glacier).  So we'll probably do Germany next spring, and national parks next August or spring 2017.

My husband can only go on vacation in the last half of months, and I can't go away in late August or late October, so our inflexibility has not been our friend here!  But all of the great info I got here has been bookmarked for the future.

[mrshandy]

Dingle was my favorite by far! So beautiful and scenic. Drive the Ring of Dingle. I think I liked it better than the Ring of Kerry.

Since you have more time than we had I would go to the Aran Islands.

The west coast was fantastic.

Cliffs of Moher are definitely worth a visit.

[rubytue]

Are either one of you guys Game of Thrones fans? Because I almost scrapped my plans for the three day driving your plan here: www.causewaycoastandglens.com/Game-of-Thrones-Itinerary.T1163.aspx

[Deleted]

Amazing Spa. Great restaurant. Beautiful scenery.
www.aghadoeheights.com/

[Deleted]

I have tons of Cork recos if you go there - this hotel is a must. www.doylecollection.com/hotels/the-river-lee-hotel

[v]

@shoegal, what are your Cork recommendations? Will we need a car while in Cork? Right now, I'm thinking that maybe we'll stay in Dublin from Friday through Sunday, and then head down to Cork by train on Sunday afternoon/evening, spend time there, get a rental car at some point, and then head west and work our way up the coast.

[Deleted]

Apr 22, 2015 18:14:52 GMT -5 v said:

@shoegal, what are your Cork recommendations? Will we need a car while in Cork? Right now, I'm thinking that maybe we'll stay in Dublin from Friday through Sunday, and then head down to Cork by train on Sunday afternoon/evening, spend time there, get a rental car at some point, and then head west and work our way up the coast.

Will be back tomorrow - on my phone so copy and paste stinks for all my links, etc. No car needed for cork! Train there and you can even taxi to Blarney Castle from there easily too. I did not kiss the stone yuck but the grounds are sooooo pretty.

[Deleted]

Food Stuff:

Paradise Crepe: plus.google.com/107388648484734333386/about?gl=us&hl=en

They have delicious sweet AND savory crepes – I’d recommend them for breakfast because their crepes are SO delish.


www.electriccork.com/fish-bar/ - Small Fish Bar restaurant above “Electric” bar, amazing seafood & try to sit at the bar overlooking the river.


www.corkheritagepubs.com/pubs/sin-e/ Sine E pub – YUM! Go for a late dinner & the awesome irish entertainment.


No 5 Fenn’s Quay Restaurant: fennsquay.net/


Stuff to Do:

www.englishmarket.ie/ - Amazing treats – grab stuff for a picnic & hang out on one of the quays or a park (perhaps at University College Cork). Make sure you come back to eat at the restaurant up on the second level, awesome view of the atrium.


www.blarneycastle.ie/ Take a taxi to Blarney and spend the day there, there are a ton of walks and gardens – we really enjoyed it. You can spend the large part of a day here if you do the walks.


Blackrock Castle – I am a science nerd so I really loved this: www.bco.ie/ The castle is super beautiful.


The opera house usually has something playing – consider checking it out & that area is really cute.


www.ucc.ie/en/ - Check out the UCC grounds, we wandered around there with a local & got a deep appreciation for all the fascinating work that has been done there.


www.shandonbells.ie/ - Ring the bells & awesome view of Cork at St Annes

Most importantly, enjoy wandering the city – we walked all over & found a ton of little hidden gems & cute stores – the city is so tiny that you can really walk around it, and the river, quays, and little side streets are adorable. And – ask the locals for recos, they are SO eager to share their tips and recommendations with you.

[v]

Okay, very, very rough draft -- what would you guys change? Would you spend more/less time anywhere? Switch out any of the towns we'd stay in? Add/take out activities/towns? Galway instead of Doolin? Thanks everyone!

Arrive Dublin Friday morning

Friday - Sunday: Dublin (2 nights)
Sunday - Tuesday: Cork (2 nights): visit Cork City, Blarney Castle, Cobh? Anything else?
Tuesday - Wednesday: Dingle (1 night): Do Dingle Peninisula and...?
Wednesday - Friday: Doolin (2 nights): Cliffs of Moher and the Burren, Aran Islands day trip,
Friday - Sunday: Ennis (2 nights)

Fly out of Shannon on Sunday morning

[madisen]

Consider visiting the Rock of Cashel in Cashel on your way to Cork.

[madisen]

Some other things we did that weren't necessarily mentioned yet:

- if you're into whiskey check out the Jameson distillery. We visited on the way to Kinsale for the night. Kinsale has some good b&b's and seafood restaurants despite being an otherwise sleepy town.

- personally we liked the ring of Kerry and thought the muckross house and surrounding grounds/area were beautiful. We broke the trip up by staying the night in Kenmare. It had some great pubs and a stone circle that was cool to visit.

- if you go to dingle drive around the famine areas/visit potato famine cottage. It's eerie and breathtakingly sad to think of the history. It's like a time capsule with the rows of tilled soil still visible and never touched again.

- we stayed in doolin when we visited the burren and the cliffs of moher.

- if you're into silly and kind of kitchy, consider Bunratty for their historical dinner in a real castle. We liked it but then again my dh always enjoys a meal when he gets to eat with his hands. We did that out last night before flying out of Shannon.

We loved Ireland and our choices of b&b's, restaurants, etc. Locals in pubs were friendly and engaging in all the towns we visited. We went in 2011 and before queen Elizabeth's historic visit. Everyone seemed to want to talk politics with us - about Obama, the queen's visit, among others.

[madisen]

In Dingle we stayed at the Pax guest house b&b. I highly recommend it. Beautiful home with views of the harbor (and fungi the dolphin at the time). It was raining as Ireland is want to do and the owner left some ponchos out for us as he knew we'd be doing some walking. I had a cold at the time with a cough and when we got back from dinner the turndown service which was local chocolates also had a note and a tall mug of honey/lemon/clove tea for my throat. The next morning we ordered from the breakfast list and he went outside to collect fresh eggs from his free roaming chickens. Highly recommend!