a week in Ireland without a car?

I'd suggest a few days in Dublin, including perhaps the Mary Gibbons tour to Newgrange, then a train to Galway and a few days there with tours to the Aran Islands, and/or Connemara, and/or the Cliffs of Moher and Burren. The Dublin-Galway train is just a couple of hours. So is the bus between Galway and Dublin Airport, if you want to avoid an unnecessary transfer in Dublin. Look for day tours out of Galway on Google, or in guidebooks.

There's also good bus service between Dublin (and its airport) and Belfast if you want to see Belfast, but that would be more of a big-city trip. My preference would be rural areas in the west, with Galway as a base. There's much more to see in Ireland but with just a week and no car I'd keep it simple and minimize travel between cities.

Hi!

I'm planning an 8 day Ireland trip in September/October without a car. Our plan is to keep it simple, realizing we will not see every small town without a car. We are flying in and out of Dublin, taking a bus directly to Galway for 3 nights, then train to Dublin for 3 nights, train to Belfast for 1 night and taking a bus from Belfast back to a Dublin Airport hotel for our last night.

I don't have all the details worked out yet, but so far we will be taking 2 day tours, one for the Cliffs of Moher and another (incredibly long and maybe not a good fit for everyone) to Kerry. We're planning to fill the rest of the days with sights in each city with the option for another bus tour if we feel we want to.

I think as long as you keep yourself to 2-3 bases maximum and are realistic about the limitations, you can have a very worthwhile week!

We just did exactly this in May.

We spent 3 nights in Belfast and 4 nights in Dublin. Yes, I know Belfast isn't technically part of Ireland, but....

We flew into Dublin and took the bus from Dublin airport to Belfast. (It's only a couple of hours.) We had the afternoon and evening in Belfast, and we just walked around and explored. The next day, we did a tour to the Giant's Causeway and other sights on and near the Causeway Coast. It was gorgeous. We did a private tour with Glenara Elite Travel for this. The day after, we walked around and visited a couple of churches and such. We would have liked to have visited City Hall, but it was closed that day. In the late afternoon, we did a murals/troubles tour with Paddy Campbell (Black Taxi) tours. I highly, highly recommend this if you go to Belfast.

We took the bus to Dublin the next morning. Train would have worked, too, but the bus station was just around the corner from our hotel in Belfast.

That afternoon and evening, we walked around and explored some of Dublin. The next day, we did a tour to the Boyne Valley, Trim Castle, Fore Abbey, and Loughcrew tombs. We really liked that. The day after, we did a tour to the Rock of Cashel, Blarney Castle, and Cahill Castle. It was excellent, as well. Both were with Irish Day Tours. The last day, we toured Kilmainham Gaol, St. Patrick's Cathedral, the Book of Kells, and Christ Church Cathedral.

If you don't want to go to the North of Ireland, then I would suggest choosing one other city for a base, such as Galway or Cork, in addition to Dublin, and book some tours from those places.

You can get to the Rock of Cashel, Blarney Castle, etc. by public transport, but it is a bit more complicated and time consuming. This is why we decided to do day tours. They were long days, but very good.

Be aware that almost everything in Ireland needs to be booked in advance, even restaurants, even on weeknights. Kilmainham Gaol, the Book of Kells, etc. usually need to be booked at least a day in advance (the gaol WELL in advance), or you will be out of luck.

Hope that helps!

Very possible. We did it by having three 2-night says and a couple of one-nighters, and hiring a driver to take us between locations, and also on the lovely road thru Connemera. There are many advantages to having a local drive, along with the delightful surprises they can show you along the way.

I think the person we hired (now 9-10 years later) may have retired. Messages sent thru his old web site and his old email bounce back. But your hotels/BnBs should be able to recommend someone...and that "someone" could very well wind up being a few different people depending on how far of a range you travel.

After all was said and done, I analyzed the costs vs. if we had just rented a car and paid our own petrol, insurance on said rental car, and it was not that much of a difference in cost.

It is doable to see some of Ireland in a week without a car. Will you have seven full days on the ground or are you including travel time from somewhere in England or Scotland? Will you put Ireland at the beginning, middle, or end? Will you fly or take a ferry? All of these things will determine what your best locations in Ireland will be as you will likely want to stay in towns that will have quick access to the train. For instance, you might find a cheap flight into Cork, and then it would make more sense to spend your time in that area. Generally, my suggestion would be to pick two larger towns to split your time so you aren’t wasting the little time you have sitting on a train to get somewhere. Dublin and Galway are close by train, and if you were to spend three days in each you could see quite a variety of sights using guided day tours. From Cork it’s easy to get to Killarney by train. Belfast is also a quick train ride from Dublin and three days there would also be nice. So, from Dublin you could do a day trip to Newgrange, Glendalough, Monasterboice and Hill of Tara maybe. From Galway you could do trips to Cliffs of Moher and the Burren, Connemara, and Aran Islands. From Killarney you could do a day trip to the Dingle Peninsula, Ring of Kerry, Gap of Dunloe. Lots of variety, but it will really depend how you will get there.

thanks everyone for the replies. It seems like a lot of suggestions here advise to just split the trip up into Dublin and Galway and do day trips so maybe that's what I will plan on doing. I'm only in the beginning stages of planning this trip and can add days if necessary. So how about something like this:
1. arrive in dublin
2. dublin
3. day trip somewhere from dublin.
4. dublin to galway
5. day trip aran islands
6. day trip cliffs of moher
7. day trip connemara
8. leave

rick steves also recommends this for a 8 day itinerary:
3 days: Dublin
5 days, add: Dingle Peninsula
8 days, add: Galway, Aran Islands,

should i try to add dingle peninsula?

from google images, some of the scenic sites seem a bit similar to each other so I can't tell what is worth adding and what may be repetitive for a short trip (or perhaps nothing is repetitive).

Without a car Dingle will be very time consuming to get to.

thanks Anita, i guess Dingle is out

so i added some days and here's what i'm thinking now

1. arrive galway
2. aran islands/cliffs of moher organized trip. It ends at 6 and the last train to dublin is 7:20 or something similar to I'd like to take that and have 2 full days. Does that seem feasible? Or should i just go to dublin next day?)
3. dublin
4. dublin
5. 3 day organized trip to dingle
6. dingle
7. dingle
8. 2 day organized trip to norhtern island
9. northern island
10. leave

does that seem like a good way to spend 10 days without a car?

My wife and I have planned a 14 day trip to Ireland w/o a car. We have a hotel in Dublin for the 1st couple of days. We arranged it so that we booked the hotel the night before we are actually arriving so we can recover from the overnight air trip.
We plan on using the train service between Dublin (Connolly Station) and Sligo go on a half day tour to Donegal, stay overnight in Sligo. We will then be picked up to go on a tour of County Mayo before being dropped off at our B&B in Castlebar, County Mayo. The next day we will go by train to Galway probably having to change trains in Athlone. After a couple of nights in Galway we go back to Dublin overnight and then take a train (Heuston Station) to Waterford and a bus to Macroom to stay two nights in a B&B, tour the greater Cork City area for a day. We will take a bus from Macroom to pick up the train in Millstreet and on to Killarney. Three nights in Killarney. Take a group tour of Kerry and a private tour of the Beara Peninsula (where some of my ancestors came from). We will then take a train to Dublin and stay overnight before leaving Ireland.

Dayexday
I see no one has responded to your last question about the various organized tours. It’s difficult to comment on any of it without knowing the itinerary for each tour. My concern is that you will be doing a lot of rushing around to join all of these various tours, and it may end up costing quite a bit to do all of these tours. Will it allow you to see everything you want to see, or will it be the green blur tour?