10day ireland

A good guidebook will get you started on choosing where to stay according to your budget and your likes/dislikes. It will also tell you about public transportation. In general you'll be relying on Irish Rail (serves the major cities) and Bus Eireann (serves smaller places). See, for example, https://www.ireland.com/en-us/what-is-available/getting-around-ireland/articles/public-transport/

Chris, with this itinerary, you will spend almost 30 hours on public transport - are you sure you want to spend this much time traveling?

We travel to Europe at least once a year and for an itinerary such as yours, we would limit ourselves to two major locations (Dublin and Galway City?) and do day trips form there.

I would agree with what Jim said, if you are trying to do this by public transit you will spend far too much time getting from place to place. Limit yourself to two places that are easy by train, either Dublin/Galway, or Dublin Killarney, and do guided day trips. Every time you have to travel from one place to the next on public transit you are basically losing a day of touring as you won't get to the next town in time to join a guided tour, and you won't be able to get to many of the places you want to see by public transit very easily. For example, you have two days allotted to Galway, after just one full day in Dublin, but by the time you get to Galway by train or bus most of the guided day trips will have left for the day. Getting to Dingle from Galway will use up a whole day, and getting to Kinsale from Dingle will probably mean taking a bus to Killarney, and then a train to Cork, and then a bus to Kinsale. By then you most likely wouldn't have much of the day left. You can do Dingle as a guided day trip from Killarney. The train from Dublin to Killarney is a little over four hours so you should have half the day left by the time you get there if you leave early enough. The train to Galway is quicker, a little over two hours. I spent four nights in each of Dublin/Killarney/Galway and could easily have added a day or two to each place. There is lots to see and do in all of them, and you will not regret any of it, but you will regret spending too much time on public transit.

Thank you for all this information. Have you ever used a Hopper. Do you have any advise how we could spend couple days in Dingle. I quest this is one place I really wanted to spend a few days at.

Would this work better

Dublin 2 day
Galway 3 days
Killarney 3 days
Someway get to Dingle for two or three days
Back to Dublin 2 days fly out. ( one day to travel back next day fly out)

In Ireland right now, but we’re renting a car. Driving narrow roads, on the left. Seems many folks in a big Audi or BMW or Citroen are on our tail, even though we’re at the speed limit, or we go around a corner and a car with a trailer (or maybe another American tourist, like us?) is creeping along at half the speed limit, or less. But we’ve survived in our tiny VW-so far. Anyway, before we picked up our rental in Galway, we landed at the Dublin Airport, took a direct CityLink Express bus to Galway. Comfortable, toilet on board, easy, not expensive, faster than train or driving with jet lag. Not sure about heading to Dingle on public transport from Galway for just a couple of days, but it was great on our previous visit. We had more time, and got there slowly — on bicycle to Tralee over a two week period, then bus to Dingle. Never enough time to see everything, but hope you can work out an itinerary.

Maybe you could only spend day 1 in Dublin and then head to Galway or just go to Galway on the day you Arrive in Dublin. See Dublin at the end of the trip. We only needed 2 days in Dublin. Dingle is wonderful. Have a wonderful trip.

The bus network is very good in Ireland but check the travel times, especially going all the way to Dingle. Also be aware legroom on buses is very poor (worse than on a plane in economy). OK for a couple of hours, not so great for five hours.

Galway is easy to reach from Dublin, also Kilkenny. Without a car I would probably skip Dingle.

The west coast is great, but it's hardly all that is worth visiting. Don't overly fixate on the west coast.

Kinsale is awesome, the start fort there is amazing. You just have to make some choices given your constraints.

You could take a direct bus from Dublin airport to Galway, would save you from having to separate stays in Dublin. Bus from Galway to Ennis, can get tours of County Clare sites from there.

Public transport is great from Dublin to Northern Ireland and from Dublin to Galway. You can get to Dingle from Galway,but it will take an entire day of your trip by bus.

Here is what we did on our trip using public transport.
We flew into Dublin and spent two nights there. We took the train to Belfast were we spent 1 night and focused in on the Titanic Experience and the HMS Caroline. The next day was an easy train and bus ride to the Antrim Coast where we spent 3 nights enjoying Giant’s Causeway, Bushmills, Dunluce Castle, and Port Rush.

The next day was the most grueling of the trip as we spent almost the whole day going to Galway by bus via Derry and Sligo. It was quite scenic, but also quite tiring. One night in Galway before taking bus/ferry to the Aran Islands for 2 nights. This was quite easy on public transit and I wonder if you might want to consider trading Dingle for the Aran Islands to give yourself a break. They are quite lovely.

Back to Galway for 2 nights. We took a day trip by bus and boat cruise to Ashford Castle where my sister did the Hawk Walk at the school of falconry. ( she says it was the trip highlight for her). We returned to Galway the same way.

A night in Westport and a final night at Dublin Airport.

There was a great deal of Ireland that we didn’t see, but we tried to enjoy what we had time for and what we could reasonably reach by public transit. I feel that Northern Ireland gives some great options that many people seem to overlook.