Ireland

[flygirl]

We’re just in the very beginning stages of looking at going to Ireland for 10 days-2 weeks this summer. 
Does anyone have any advice on where to stay?  Does it make sense to stay in multiple places around the country?
Does anyone have any hotel recommendations? (Any places with 2 doubles/queens would be awesome since we’ll have DS and would rather not get 2 rooms).

What are the absolute must sees?  Anything for a 10 yr old?  If you got a rental car to drive around how did you handle your luggage since the cars are small (we’d have 4 people). Any restaurant recommendations would be greatly appreciated also!

[mbcdefg]

We did this with my parents and two adult siblings in 2010. We all flew into Dublin, spent a couple nights there, then rented a van and drove around the countryside and ended the trip in Shannon to fly home from there.

I don’t think you need more than a couple days in Dublin. We stayed at the Aisling Hotel and liked it. The light rail was useful to get around town. The Guinness Storehouse tour was fun. I think we stayed at random B&Bs elsewhere.

I really loved the Cliffs of Moher and the Dingle Peninsula.

The town of Kinsale was really nice. I’ve heard rave reviews about the restaurant Fishy Fishy but it was closed the day we were there unfortunately.

If you’re willing/able to eat dairy, the ice cream and butter and cheese were all fantastic.

We all liked the Jameson Distillery tour.

[Pibs]

We spent about the same amount of time as you're planning in Ireland a few years ago.

We spent our first couple of days in Dublin. We stayed at Stauntons on the Green -- it was fine, but not a highlight like some of the other places we stayed. We did a Connoisseur tour at Guinness which I would totally recommend, but I'm not sure what they're doing with COVID. We loved Trinity College and the Book of Kells. Temple Bar was a fun area to visit. We did an Irish storytelling dinner at the Brazen Head which was fantastic, and also loved the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl.

After Dublin we went to Ashford Castle for a day and spent the night at Ashford Lodge. The castle was closed for a private event when we were there so a day was fine, but it was such a gorgeous place and their spa looks amazing. If we went again I'd def stay for a couple days. We did a hawk walk falconry tour which was so, so, so neat and I'd totally recommend looking into that to see if it's something you'd enjoy.

From Ashford we went to Ros a'Mhil and took a ferry to Inishmore. We did a minibus tour and talked our driver into letting us take a hike to the Worm Hole which was really cool. Overall, the island was neat but not my favorite part of our trip. Maybe another of the Aran Islands would be more interesting? We enjoyed it but I'm not sure we'd do it again. We stayed in The House Hotel in Galway, which had some scent that triggered a migraine for me so I wasn't a huge fan.

We did the Cliffs of Moher after that and stayed at The Armada Hotel which was fun, and then drove to the northern part of the Ring of Kerry. We stayed at Beach Cove B&B and the next morning did a landing tour of Skellig Michael. If you like puffins or Star Wars you should definitely go. It was a highlight of our trip because there were puffins *everywhere!*

After Skellig Michael we finished up the southern part of the Ring of Kerry and then went to Killarney National Park. We stayed at Sheen Falls Lodge, which I think was a recommendation from someone on this board when we were planning our sabbatical, and it was great. One of the last minute things we added on was a night kayaking trip to see bioluminescent plankton and it was so freakin' neat. Like you put your hand in the water and make a trail of blue sparkles -- you get to be like Elsa!

We wrapped up our trip by seeing the Blarney Stone (kissing it is terrifying, FYI) and in Cork for a couple of days at the River Lee Hotel before going back to Dublin to fly home.

The 3 things I would make you do if I could because I loved them so much would be:
Ashford Castle & Hawk Walk
Skellig Michael landing tour
Night kayaking

[mrsd2006]

We did some of the same things as the PP- stayed at the Lodge at Ashford Castle and did the hawk walk there- but at the time if you stayed at the Lodge you were not able to visit the castle - you had to have a dinner reservation or something. Breakfast was included at the Lodge and there was nothing available for dinner so DH talked them into letting us come over for tea- best 11.50 euros I've ever spent. We spent hours walking around the castle.

We also did the story telling at the Brazen Head. And went to Blarney Castle but did not kiss the stone (our cab driver told us locals would pee on it (lol, not sure if that's true) but I wasn't going to kiss it anyways.

We stayed two nights in Dublin, one night at the Lodge, one night at the lodge at Dromoland Castle (do not recommend), two nights in Killarney, one night at the Dromoland Castle (highly recommend) and two nights at Waterford Castle and the last night somewhere in Dublin before our early flight (not in order other than the nights in Dublin)

We rented a car and drove all around. Cliffs of Moher, Blarney Castle, Ring of Kerry (did a tour here), Dingle Penninsula, Blasket Island museum, hit a couple of caves and did the Waterford Crystal tour.

You can get a bigger car- we ended up in an SUV because after waiting two hours all the smaller cars were still not ready so they gave us a bigger one. It was fine but dicey in a few places but we did not scratch anything.

Very important- a lot of credit cards exclude coverage for rental cars in Ireland- check all your cards before booking it so you don't have to buy their extra insurance.

We used the Fodors Ireland book. It was very helpful.

[katyintx]

I would absolutely stay in different places around the country. Dublin is fun, but the rest of Ireland is incredible too.

Do you have any interest in Northern Ireland at all? When we went to Dublin we drove the couple of hours up to Belfast for a couple of days and I actually ended up loving NI more than Ireland. We rented bikes there and just rode around the city, stumbling upon cool things and random markets. We also did a day trip to see Giant’s Causeway, Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge, and Dark Hedges and on another day took a ferry to Island of Islay where we did some scotch tours and walked around. It was all so picturesque.

Otherwise in Dublin we went to Jameson and Guinness - your 10 y/o may not enjoy the Jameson tour as much but Guinness was interesting and at the end you can hang out in this room with incredible views of the city. We had 4 adults, so a lot of the cool stuff we did did involve bars and live music and tours.

One thing I don’t recommend is staying in the Temple Bar area. A mixture of the music and extended daylight hours makes it very hard to sleep…

[letsgetweird]

Yes, you should definitely visit multiple areas of the country. I didn't want to drive in Ireland so I went on a 4 dat bus tour which I was surprisingly very happy with.

We went to Galway, Cliffs of Moher, Dingle, Killarney etc

www.paddywagontours.com/4-Day-Tour-Of-South-Western-Ireland-Galway-Cliffs-of-Moher-Kerry-Dingle-and-Blarney

[mbcdefg]

Jan 8, 2022 16:38:41 GMT -5 letsgetweird said:

Yes, you should definitely visit multiple areas of the country. I didn't want to drive in Ireland so I went on a 4 dat bus tour which I was surprisingly very happy with.

We went to Galway, Cliffs of Moher, Dingle, Killarney etc

www.paddywagontours.com/4-Day-Tour-Of-South-Western-Ireland-Galway-Cliffs-of-Moher-Kerry-Dingle-and-Blarney

My sister and some of her friends did this tour and loved it.

[aspentosh]

Sharing the post where I recapped our trip. I'd do it again like this in a heartbeat, lol.

pandce.proboards.com/thread/606104/update-loose-ireland-itinerary-scotland

[wise_rita]

I wouldn't miss the Cliffs of Moher! I say this even though I experienced the worst weather of my life - of my ENTIRE LIFE - there and didn't get the full effect. I did get my underwear soaked through, though. Good times.

The Ring of Kerry is insanely tight and I wouldn't want to drive myself so if you want to do it, I'd definitely do a tour. That said we planned poorly and thought we could squeeze it into half a day. LOL, no, it takes at least one FULL day. So we just went a tiny ways in to Killarney National Park, which is a great Plan B and super scenic if you don't want to invest the time in the whole thing.

I really liked Gallagher's Boxty House restaurant in Dublin. It's on Temple Bar, which is normally not a place you'd want to eat, but I saw it on an Andrew Zimmern show and wanted to get boxty in at some point.

[mbcdefg]

Definitely bring a rain jacket. And a beanie hat for the Cliffs. The wind is nuts.