jessicapique

My sister and I will be arriving in London and plan on travelling to Ireland (west Ireland?). We don't have too long of a stay and will be leaving from London several days later. are there quick rail options?

DiAblo

I'm topping this off, because I too am interested in reading various replies.
Actually I'm interested in all options, easiest flight, rail, ferry, etc.

tropo

Seems like a rushed trip. On my last trip to Britain, I rented a hire car from London, drove to various locations, then dropped the rental off at Stansted Airport (so easy), then caught a Ryan Air flight across to Cork, rented another car, and then had 7 days driving around Ireland. If you do rent a car, make sure you have a good road map. I particularly liked the back roads south of Cork, which followed the coastline, and staying in village B&B's. Dublin is a busy city, and not my cup of tea, however, I particularly enjoyed the Ring of Kerry, Killarney National Park, and Dingle Peninsula. Kilkenny is an interesting city, with its castle, the witch pub, churches, etc. Don't forget to visit Johnny Fox Pub in County Wicklow. The centre of Ireland is fairly flat & uninteresting, well thats what I thought. Another pretty town is Lismore. After driving around the peninsula at Dingle, make sure you drive up throgh the Pass behind Dingle (I can't remember its name)
Enjoy the craic, but remember, a lot of Irish Pubs discontinue the craic, at the close of the tourist season.

JJBhoy

If time is the most important factor then you might want to think about flying. Ryanair fly from London Stansted to Shannon, Knock & Kerry, all in the west of Ireland. Have a look at their website - www.ryanair.com

Jim

wojazz3

Flying is the only reasonable option on getting to Ireland. Taking the train/ferry route is pretty slow unless you have some reason to end up in England or Wales near one of the ferry ports.

The Irish train system is not the best and branches out from Dublin as a hub so getting from Rosslare Harbour to Dingle, for instance, would be a slow way to do it. As JJBhoy said, Ryan Air is probably the best choice if you can fly out of Stanstead. If you are transfering back to the States directly from the flight, I would lean toward Aer Lingus which is a bit more expensive but allows you to stay at Heathrow instead of subjecting yourself to the evils of the M25 parking lot. By the time you pay for the bus and deal with the hassle, the price difference isn't that great.

Bill

Dallas

Jessicpique, I'm planning a three week vacation in Wales and England in September. My first stop will be in Fishguard Bay which is also the ferry location for Rosslare. I can tell you, there is no quick way to get to the ferry.

There are only two trains per day to Fishguard. One arrives about 1:30 p.m. and the other around midnight.

The ferry ride takes several hours, and then there is quite a long train ride from Rosslare to Dublin. I'm very sure you can't make this trip in one day.

flanneruk

There's a rather faster train route from London to Holyhead, in NW Wales, whence fast catamarans to the Dublin area. You can leave London in the morning and get to Dublin by nightfall that way - but if you then want Galway , you'll struggle to get there that day. Apart from the train through Wales (which is nice, but not immensely spectacular), both the train and the sea journey are rather dull

However, there's an enormous web of flights from London to over a dozen different Irish airports. In the West, that includes Shannon, Kerry, Knock, Galway, Donegal, Sligo and Derry. The Britain-Ireland air market is probably the world's most aggressive and competitive: play with fare offers on the web, and you may well find the flight costs less than the tube to the airport.

Given how long it takes to travel even short distances in Ireland, if you're short of time flying makes a great deal of sense