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First Trip To Ireland

Posted by (Pennsylvania) on

We are planning our first trip to Ireland and are looking for some advice. We are going to be in Ireland for 10 days and would like to travel by train to many of the major towns and attractions with using public transportation or local tours from the major towns. We plan to fly to London for a few days and then take the Eurostar to Paris for a couple of days before traveling to Ireland. We would like to spend 4 or 5 days in Dublin and do a couple of day trips from there as well as the Dublin sights. We also want to go to County Clare which is where my Grandfather is from and then Galway, Kilkenny, Donegal and Belfast. We naturally want to see the Cliffs of Moher, Blarney Castle, Dingle Peninsula, Ring of Kerry, Titanic Excperience, Black Cab tour.

Any recommendations on hotels and transportation and tour companies would be appreciated. We like the better hotels for lodging. Thanks in advance for your help.

Posted by
992 posts

Dublin is a very small city and many sights are within walking distance. I am not so sure I would spend 4-5 nights there. For a tour company, I would suggest https://vagabondtoursofireland.com. They specialize in small group tours (7-12 days). They use some of the finer hotels, but prices for their tours are reasonable. It may be worth doing something like this rather than to take different tours at each location and spending the time it will take to get from point A to point B using trains. We did an 8 days tour with Vagabond in Ireland before using Ryan Air to fly to England for the next leg of our trip. It worked out very well. If you want to go into Belfast and go to the Titanic you could do this as a one day tour from Dublin. (I have actually already booked one of these day tours for my upcoming May trip to Dublin).

Posted by
856 posts

I did three weeks in Ireland with a bus/rail pass many years ago, and I used day tours to see the sights. It worked well, but it is more time consuming than having a car. With just ten days you will not be able to see everything you want to see, especially if you want to spend 4-5 days in Dublin. I spent four days in Dublin and did a day tour to Newgrange and then spent the rest of the time seeing the sights in the city. If you want to see the Ring of Kerry or Dingle Peninsula you will have to go to Killarney by train and do a day tour.There are lots of other things to see from Killarney. If you want to see the Cliffs of Moher you might be able to do a long day tour from Dublin, but it would be better to go to Galway by train (many other things to see from Galway as well). Belfast can also be done as a day trip from Dublin. So, if you spend several days in Dublin seeing the city and doing a couple of day trips you won't have enough days left to get to both Killarney and Galway as well as any of the other sights on your list. It might be best for you to join a tour, otherwise you will have to pick one other location to spend your last few days and miss out on the rest. But, if you do join a tour it's unlikely it will cover all of the places you want to see, anyway.

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