Itinerary help for Family of 5.

Wow - thats a great itinerary. Time in each area and not overloaded. Your going to really enjoy it ! Even at the end though I'd try to avoid the one night stops. It tends to blur and waste time with check outs and check ins and a frantic pace. What's so cool is you can pick a spot for a 2-3 night stop and easily use that as a base to see TONS of fun stuff. Ask locals to when there...they gladly direct you to awesome sights or events that aren't the major tourist sights. We found Timnafinogue Woods and the amazing Dyin Cow pub that way in Tinahely. Just awesome.

If your planning on hiking up Skellig Michael book as soon as you can....the spots fill up fast. While there drive the rest of the Skellig Ring.....it isn't long and its so pretty. And try to hit some of the southern Part of the ROK ....the area above Caherdaniel is insanely beautiful and towns like Waterville and Sneem are great !

Have a great trip .....looks like a great job on the itinerary !

Thanks, ewewoolknit!

Thanks to your suggestion of booking Skellig Michael early, I got on it! Daughter now wants to go to Skellig Michael so we shifted our dates to later so she could join family for whole trip.

Question, is the drive from Dingle Penisula to Dublin a hard 6-7 hours as we've heard? The only reason we would want a car is to visit Bru Na Boinne area. Our other option (to cut down on driving ) is return car to Shannon airport, take the train to Dublin, and take a day tour from a tour company to Bru Na Boinne, which sounds complicated for 5 people rather than drive there.

If we drive from Dingle Penisula to Dublin, is it possible to stop at Rock of Cashel en route, or is that too long a day?

My wife and I only drove Dingle to Dublin once (actually Castlemaine) and that took us about 5 1/2 hours without any sightseeing stops. Others with more experience could be more definitive but I would think 6 hours would be about right. It is mostly good roads though.

You could certainly do a Cashel stop but it would be a long long day. Say 4 + hours to Cashel, a couple hours at the site, an hour for food and another 2-3 hours to Dublin. So maybe a 10 hour day ? It's a lot. Cashel is amazing. Really depends on the car tolerance of everyone. Two of our kids would have thrived on it - they loved car trips and do to this day. Another one car trips made her miserable so that kind of day would be brutal for her.

The tour bus out to Newgrange though is easy to deal with and quite comfortable. Dublin driving was not easy for us and I LOVE driving in Ireland.....Dublin is a major headache. Depends on how much driving you want to do in Dublin and surrounding area. When you go to Newgrange do you also want to visit the Battle of the Boyne battlefield and/or on to Tara ..........or just Newgrange and Knowth ? Is the car just for that or are you on another Dublin day heading out to Wicklow and seeing magical Glendalough ? Personally for me if its just Newgrange I'd skip the Dublin driving hassle and use a bus.......but you might be a calmer big city driver than I am.

Good luck with the trip....you'll love it. We are going back this spring with two of our adult daughters and for 5 days of the trip with my mother in law which is fulfilling her life dream. We can't wait !