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Final Travel Itinerary for Summer 2019?

Posted by on

Hi all,

My family of 4 (two teens 14 and 15) had originally planned to travel this summer, but had to put off until 2019. I'll be making some flight reservations soon, so wanted your feedback. I've changed and rearranged things millions of times, but I think I am happy with this final result. Originally had planned to drive most of the island in 14 days, but have decided after receiving your valuable feedback to concentrate on one part and have mostly 2 night stays. My family is from Donegal and parts of Northen Ireland, so this made the most sense to me. All the lodging locations are in bold. The activities next to each day are just suggestions and not set in stone. I plan to be pretty flexible within reason. I do like to have lodging booked ahead of time, but within those constraints we can do what we want at the time. Please let me know what you think!

Day 0- red eye flight to Dublin from Philadelphia

Day 1- Dublin: do what we can considering we may be dead on our feet, might book late afternoon tickets for Book of Kells

Day 2- Dublin: Kilmainham Gaol, GPO, perhaps Brazen Head dinner

Day 3- pick up rental car at airport, drive across to Mount Falcon in County Mayo stopping at Strokestown Park and the National Irish Potato Famine Museum

Day 4- Mount Falcon

Day 5- Mount Falcon/ drive to County Sligo stopping to climb Knocknarea (my daughter is named Maeve, so this is important to us)

Day 6- Sligo explore Yeats country

Day 7- drive up to Donegal staying in Ardara- checking out Creevykeel Court tomb and Donegal castle on the way

Day 8- Ardara- Sliev Liag and Glencolmcille Folk Village

Day 9- drive over to Glenveagh National Park or maybe Fanad- depends on what we feel like doing- then on to Rathmullan

Day 10- Rathmullan- Inishowen drive out to Malin Head

Day 11- drive to Derry, explore and go on Martin McCrossan walking tour, continue on for lodging in Bushmills

Day 12- Giant's Causeway, Dunluce Castle, White Rocks Beach, etc. return rental and then head to hotel by Dublin airport

Day 13- fly home

Thank you for any advice or suggestions!

Christine

Posted by
23 posts

Hi, We (family of 4 with two teens - 14 and 16) just returned from 10 days in Ireland and though we did not visit Donegal, I can chime in on activities on two days in Dublin. Like you, we arrived on flight from US arriving very early a.m. - at 5:05 a.m. We had breakfast at O'Neill's Pub which opened at 8 a.m. on a Sunday (the only place opening that early on a Sunday which I could find), then got on the hop-on, hop-off bus on which two of us slept for most of the full circuit (about 2 hours). After checking into our airbnb at 12:30 and resting a bit, we did a tour of Trinity College (great) and visited the Little Museum of Dublin (admission included with the DoDublin hop-on hop off bus, a great deal). I figured the Little Museum would be about as much as we could take on little to no sleep and it worked out well. We walked a little and had a great dinner at the Hairy Lemon, which turned out to be one of our favorite pub meals during the trip.

On the next day, we visited the Gaelic Athletic Museum at Croke Park, then did GPO and Kilmainham Gaol (booked tix about a month in advance). We ended the day with "The Irish House Party" which was a great night of music if you'd want to consider that.

Hope this is helpful. I am sure others will comment on the rest of your trip plans.

Posted by
25 posts

Thank you for your suggestions. I didn't think about Croke Park, but will look into it!

Posted by
359 posts

Looks excellent. Some fascinating stops through beautiful country. While we prefer even longer stops 3-4 day minimums at least you are minimizing the relocation disruption. Since you all seem to have a wonderful balance of types of stops including historical I would urge you to consider stopping at Newgrange outside of Dublin to see the passage tomb there.....it was exceptional and very haunting. Even our kids who aren't totally into history loved if.

Great job.....you'll have a great trip. It's an amazing and somewhat neglected area of Ireland. We loved it.

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