According to the 21 day driving trip, I am to rent a car in Glendalough and sleep in Kilkenny. How would I get to my hotel in Dublin from the airport without a car and then how would I get to Glendalough from Dublin in order to rent the car?
Thank you,
Renee Curtis
Hi, Renee. This Ireland itinerary does not intend you to get the car in Glendalough but to pick it up in Dublin and drive to Glendalough. You can pick up the car in the city, or if that worries you, then you can return to the airport by one of the several airport bus services. See https://www.dublinairport.com/to-from-the-airport or pages 28-31 in Rick's Ireland 2016 (full-sized) book.
There are no car rentals in Glendalough.
To elaborate a bit on Laura's comment: you're generally better off renting your car at a location outside central Dublin, if only to save yourself the aggravation of starting your driving on the left adventure in the congestion of city traffic. There are numerous rental car agencies at the airport, from where your trip will commence on the motorway...a little more comfortable start to the learning curve. You'll likely have a better chance of getting a car with automatic transmission from the airport too, rather than a manual transmission with a LH shifter which seems to be the default unless you specify otherwise at booking.
For info, it's about a 1+20 drive from the airport to Glendalough.
We used RS 21 day driving trip as a guide for our 29 night trip to Ireland in late April. We find it easier to stay in the city we're leaving from at the end of our trip so we did what most people here say not to do (we're in our early 70s and we've done this on many previous trips so we were not worried). We traveled from SF so have the time difference and lack of good sleep issues but they have never bothered us. We picked up our rental car at the Dublin Airport and drove immediately to Glendalough area. This by-passes city driving. With our stops for pictures it took less than two hours. We spent the night in Laragh-Annamoe, visited Glendalough the next morning, then drove on to Kilkenny. After finishing our driving trip around Ireland, we returned our car to the Dublin Airport and took the bus to Dublin. Bought a round trip ticket which we used to return to the airport a few days later. We got a standard shift car and found that driving on the left (Mr.) was not that hard, taking the Military Road was not that narrow or winding, there were few cars so it gave us time to adjust to the roads and left side driving without a lot of cars around.
We don't know you or your previous travel experiences so are not recommending this plan for you but putting out the idea for consideration. If you have traveled before and know what your reaction is to the time difference it's possible this might work.
