Ireland driving itinerary
 

Hi!

My husband and I are looking for your advice when it comes to setting up an itinerary for an Ireland trip. We are planning on flying into the Shannon airport on August 20 and renting a car. Our idea was to travel North along the Coast, ultimately ending up in Dublin. Our flight home would be August 31 from Dublin. We are open to any and all suggestions...we like the idea of staying 2+ nights at each stop, and are looking for charming villages and relaxing drives and gorgeous scenery. Thanks so much for any help you might be able to provide!

We are also considering starting in Dublin and ending in Dublin...

You have not bought tickets or booked any hotels? I like flying into Dublin and out of Dublin but I love Dublin and have seen the southwest enough so don't venture there anymore. It is up to you but I would not wait much longer to book hotels.
Do you want to go into Northern Ireland?

Hi! We have just booked our plane tickets but nothing else...we are going to be starting and leaving from Dublin. We have no hotels booked as we are figuring out where exactly we want to go. We were thinking of something along the lines of:

2 nights in Dublin
2 nights in or around Galway
2-3 nights in Donegal
2 nights TBD
1 night in Belfast
Last night in Dublin before flight next day

My husband has been to the south but not the north, but this will be my first time in Ireland.

Thanks!

Buswells is very central and nice, Jury's Inn or Harding hotel by Christ Church or if you want to be on the other side of the liffey,
http://www.maldronhotelsmithfield.com/ by Jameson. You have the Luas for easy transportation there. We always take the bus rt into town from the airport and then you can pick up car on your way out to Galway. 2 nights TBD, I would look at somewhere on the coast for sure like Portrush so you can explore the area and not be rushed. I love Belfast, make sure you do a black cab tour. So nice that you are doing NI.

Not sure about dates but during the summer you can stay at Trinity College as a B&B.

Thank you!

We were thinking of perhaps spending 3 nights in Westport and 1 in Galway vs. 2 and 2, or even skipping Galway altogether? It's hard to figure out which town would be a great base for daytime sightseeing while also giving us a quaint town to stay in with a couple local pubs/restaurants to enjoy at night.

We are staying here for five nights in Westport in Sept.
https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/3770786 But Darren who owns Clew Bay hotel owns it and you can book it through there also.
http://www.clewbayhotel.com/ email and ask for Darren to message you back.
So much to do there, we are going to Clare Island one day and renting bikes to ride the old rail trail to Achill another. Climbing Crough Patrick and lots of pubs and music at night.

There's actually much to be said for flying into either Shannon or Dublin and then returning from the other one. The plane tickets may be more costly, of course, because it's not a round trip.

If you're willing to fly into Shannon, that would put you only about 50 miles from Galway, whereas from Dublin, it's 120 miles. Moreover, there is a wealth of interesting things to see and do in Clare, the area between Shannon and Galway. That would include:

1. Friary/abbey ruins at Quin and Dysert O'Dea and Kilmacduagh; there's also a reconstructed Iron Age vollage near Quin at Craggaunowen Interpretative Center;

2. Dromoland Castle, a vast country estate now turned luxury hotel, but you could still drive around the grounds and peek inside even if you aren't staying there;

3. The Cliffs of Moher, along the west coast of Clare, which drop sheer several hundred feet into the ocean -- one of the true OMG! sights of Ireland;

4. The Burren National Park, a curious limestone desert with dolmen tombs, some hiking trails, and the Burren Perfumery, which makes perfumes and cologne from the local wildflowers;

5. Doolin, one of the top centers for traditional Irish music (try Gus O'Connor's Pub); and

6. if you like his poetry, the Lake of Innisfree, Ben Bulben, and other William Butler Yeats-related sites around Gort and Thoor Ballylee.

We enjoyed staying at the Ballinalacken Castle Hotel near Doolin.

You might want to consider a day trip to the Aran Islands, which you can do by ferry from either Galway or Doolin.

Cong, on the north side of Lough Corrib (to the north of Galway), is also worth considering for perhaps an overnight stop. If you can afford it, you can stay at the Guinness Castle; if not, find a B&B in Cong or nearby, and go to the castle for dinner. You can take a cruise out onto the lake where they'll put you ashore on an island with the ruins of a church. There's also a ruined riverside abbey in Cong, various stone circles nearby, and Oscar Wilde grew up around there -- the son of a pastor (!). The John Wayne/Maureen O'Hara movie "The Quiet Man" was filmed there, too.

If you're going to the area around Westport and Castlebar, I would also recommend Thomas Flanagan's novel "The Year of the French," a beautifully-written book about a doomed Irish uprising in that area against the British in 1797. And if you haven't read James Joyce's "Dubliners," you might want to put that in your e-reader as well.

Hi Jeffergray! Thank you so much for the wonderful ideas!

As of now our trip is looking a little something like this, though I still feel like it's not quite right. Are we missing out by not visiting the South?

Day 1: Drive from Dublin to Delphi with a lunch in Galway City on our way. Stay overnight for three nights, touring the area and fishing, biking, visiting Westport, etc.

Day 4: Make our way to the Donegal area. Stay 2 nights.

Day 6: Head up to the Giant's Causeway and stay in that area for 2 nights.

Day 8: Belfast for a night

Day 9: Head to Dublin for last night

I love your plan. No, your can do the south another time. Sounds great.

Saving

As to South versus North: To travel, unfortunately, usually means having to choose. You will be able to cover a lot of Ireland in 9 days -- that was the length of the trip I took with my wife some years back -- but you can't cover everything. Here, you've indicated your husband had already visited at least some places in the south, and that's the kind of consideration that can tip the balance.

Also, Northern Ireland is getting a lot of attention these days because it is used for so much of the filming in "Game of Thrones." (You might look on the NEW YORK TIMES website for a travel article they did not so long ago on some of the filming locations in the north; the TAMPA BAY TIMES has one as well that you can easily find on-line as well.) If you do a search on "northern ireland filming locations game of thrones" or something similar, lots of itineraries and tours will come up. So, depending on your social circle, you may enhance your standing and become the envy of your friends if you can say, "Yes, we walked the Dark Hedges Road, and we've been to Winterfell castle . . . except, of course, the Irish call it Ballintoy."

Having said that, the south was always the more heavily populated and wealthier part of the country, probably because it was more exposed to commerce from Europe. In addition to the sights in Clare that I mentioned in my previous post, here are some of the wonderful things that my wife and I saw in southern and western Ireland that you might want to see in the future:

1. the Waterford Crystal manufacturing facility;

2. the impressive cathedral and castle ruins atop the Rock of Cashel, and the other ruined monasteries nearby;

3. the beautifully preserved medieval castle at Cahir, on an island in the Suir river;

4. the lakes at Killarney and the nearby attractions like Muckross House and Ross Castle; and

5. the Ring of Kerry Drive and the drive along the coastline of the Dingle peninsula, with their stunning scenery.

We also had an unforgettable trip by boat out to see the offshore Dark Ages monastery on Skellig Michael, which was featured in the closing scene of the most recent "Star Wars" movie.