8 Days in Ireland

It looks doable, though here's a question: do you end up in Dublin, or return to Shannon? If you have to be back in Shannon on day 8 then you may need to cut back somewhere along the way.

FWIW, the Rick Steves guide (pp. 6-10) gives highlights and priorities.

I would say that it depends on what you want to do in the towns and how much driving you want to do every day

When you say 2.5 days is Dublin, is the 0.5 day the day you fly out?

We will start in Shannon and end in Dublin, I figured 2-1/2 days in Dublin because the day we arrive in Dublin from our driving trip it maybe late afternoon.  We are not counting the day we leave as we would be leaving late morning on our last day in Ireland to go over to London for the remainder of our trip.  We can always shave a day off London to make it a 9 day trip in Ireland.

These would be our main sites that we would like to see: Cliffs of Moher, Dingle, Cork, Waterford, Glendalough and ending in Dublin. I really hope this is doable in the amount of time we expect to be there.  Any suggestion as to what towns to stay the night in along this route? I thought maybe staying one night in Shannon, 1 night in Dingle, 1 night in Killarey ( this town maybe to close to Dingle) 1 night in Cork or Waterford before heading toward Dublin by way of Glendalough.

We estimate 6 to 8 hours a day driving time with some site seeing stops along the way.  I did read on some of the forum questions regarding driving to add 25% to driving times that google maps suggest.  For instants google maps suggest it takes 2 hours & 50 minutes from Dublin to Cork so I should expect around close to 4 hours.  Would this be a good assessment?  Many roads in Ireland seem to be very narrow so I would expect that we would have to drive slower than we do here in the US and this would take longer to get from town to town. 

Please let me know your thoughts on this schedule.

Thank you for your help
Karen Brenden