Latst Minute Trip to Ireland
 

It turns out we will probably be making a week long trip to Ireland in July, probably the 5th - 13th. I'm nervous about finding places to stay. We will probably fly into Dublin and not try to cram in a visit to the North this time. ANY advice on decent B&B's or places to stay would be greatly appreciated. Our itenerary is wide open at this moment.

What sort of things are you interested in? Culture, History, Nightlife, Sheep-sightings, Gardens, Parks, Dining out? Do you prefer comfort or convenience? Age, number of people, etc... all these details will help us give you useful suggestions :D

We had a hard time making reservations for B&B's in Dublin. We might have found it easier to reserve hotels. Have you thought of flying into Shannon and touring the West? and Northwest? It is beautiful! For B&B's for all of Ireland, go to townandcountry.ie or it might be town&country.ie

Okay, thanks for the response, I'll give a little more detail. Our crew will consist of two married folk (early 30's) with a son who is just under two. I haven't booked anything yet, but airfare is cheaper into Dublin for us. We will rent a car and drive around, but probably not more than 3 hours/day with our son.

We are interested in history, culture, but not so much the dining out (quick, good food works best with the toddler). To give you an idea of our interests: we visited Scotland several years back and visited restored castles, castle ruins, cairns, and stone circles. We stayed at old manor homes that had been converted to B&B's (most places included dinner and b-fast). We would love to stay in a place or two that have pubs attached to their accomodations or close-by for a quick early drink.

We would like to see some small towns, not necessarily all the big tourist sites (we probably will do Dublin and the Blarney Stone). We don't mind staying in a lot of different places, provided that we spend some time doing active things on the trip for our son to burn off some energy during the day.

I'll start checking the website you mentioned cd, thanks. I've gotten tons of great ideas of this message board already, can't believe I didn't find it before now!

I would advise making B&B reservations now - we are going in August and did our booking about a month ago and found some were already booked. The good news is that most did say they had family rooms. In addition to townandcountry.ie I also used familyhomes.ie and southeastireland.travel.ie (not just the southeast, they had more). Two other useful sites (besides this one of course) are irelandespert.com and irelandyes.com.

You and I like the same sort of things... I would make the following recommendations for things to do/see:

Newgrange and Knowth/Howth, north of Dublin (ancient Celtic burial sites)

Glendalough Abbey, south in the Wicklow Mountains

Powerscourt Gardens/Falls, near Glendalough

Rock of Cashel (if you make it that far west)

Dun Laoghaire (seaside town just south of Dublin)

In Dublin itself:

Dublin Castle
Phoenix Park/Zoo
Book of Kells (at Temple Univ)
wander around town, its great to people-watch!

There are of course many other things to do, this is just a start :D

Good itineray from Green Dragon above. Accomodation can be a little expensive in Dublin. I would advise staying for a couple of days in Dublin. You will not need a car for this and the traffic is terrible so save yourself the stress. Dublin is small enough to walk or use the frequent buses. Hire a car for three or four days and head out of Dublin. You should be able to find B+Bs in any of the smaller towns. ChecK with the Irish Tourist board. Book in advance if you can. Do not go North at that time of year as religious tensions run high during the protestant marching season in "mad July." %%-

We stayed the Pineforest House in Blarney, the owners were very nice. We would stay there again, go to WWW.pineforestbb.com

The west coast of Ireland must not be missed---Dingle, cliffs of moher, Connemara area!

If you go to Clifton stay at the guest house called Dun Ri--very nice.

Town and Country Homes has a book of B&B's listed, you can also go online and find many through this group.

Hi try Clara House in Rathmines in Dublin...friend of mine runs it and its lovely. Also if you are in Ennis stay at Kilmoon House on Kildysart Rd...wonderful family atmosphere
enjoy

Thanks to all for your advice! It looks like our trip is getting postponed until August, but still think I'm running up against time with B&B reservations. I think we are going to fly into Dublin and out of Shannon (or vice-versa). Now that we have our final dates (always flexible since we are expats!), I've started contacting places.

I saw some of your posts, GreenDragon, and though we might be interested in the same things!

isabel, would you mind posting your itinerary here? I'm having a hard time figuring distances between villages (have checked mappy.com and multimap.com with no success).

Thanks itsmlf and HannahHall for your B&B reccomendations.

As far as visiting Dublin, is it better to spend a couple of days there and skip Connemara or cut Dublin short and try to see the area NW of Galway? To be honest, the only thing that interested me about Dublin was:
1) saying I've been there, 2)the Book of Kells, 3) Temple Bar area, & 4)the Bronze and Iron Age finds at the National Museum. Would I really be doing myself a disservice by not seeing more of the city? How does Dublin rank against other major European cities (Paris, Venice, Geneva, Florence, Amsterdam)?

I think you may be too ambitious to try a few days in Dublin, tour the west, and get all the way south to the Blarney Castle, then back to Shannon or Dublin for the flight home, especially with a 2 yr old. If you go in August, the roads will be full of tour buses, so driving will be slow. It might be easier on all of you to concentrate on just two "home bases", Dublin, and maybe Dingle?

Dublin has a good hop off/on bus tour. Get on that and see what interest you. This would be an easy way to get to the things you want to see. Walk down Grafton Street, interesting shops, Bewely's Oriental cafe is a good place for lunch. St. Patrick's Cathedral is nice, Jonathan Swift is buried there. Have a Guinness and enjoy Dublin!