Help Please!! Ireland questions!

Looks good to me! How are you planning to use the two days if you don't go to Belfast?

Dingle and Killarney without a car will be difficult. You'll spend much of your time hopping from bus to bus. Plus you'll be very limited on what you can see. Make sure you have your route carefully planned before you find yourself stuck somewhere.

Thanks. My understanding (and this is just from different things I've read) is that I can get to Killarney from Galway by bus and that Killarney is best explored on foot. I can take a tour or day trip to Dingle Peninsula from Killarney. Or am I incorrect about this? I want to make sure I get all the info. before I commit to this itinerary. Also, if I don't go to Belfast I thought it was give me more time in Dublin/Galway and also allow for travel time. That way I won't feel super rushed in all these places... Would appreciate any more thoughts!

Dropping Belfast would help your schedule. If you took the train to Belfast I think you'd come back to Dublin to connect to Galway. I might be wrong since so please verify. You would probably enjoy either an Aran Island trip (spend the night or day trip) and/or a Connemara day trip out of Galway more than a quick visit to Belfast. I'm not aware of any day trips/tours from Killarney to Dingle. Dingle is wonderful but without a car I'd be tempted to skip it. There are some people here that are dedicated travelers without cars so they would have better input. My basic advice is don't get over there hoping something will work out so you can get to Dingle. Out of Killarney I believe there are tours to the Ring of Kerry. You might be happier with that. It's more touristy but more likely to exist than a Dingle tour. The attraction of Dingle is Dingle and not the historical sites. Killarney National Park is wonderful. You could spend a couple of days there without any trouble. You're missing all sorts of top tier sites by the way. The Rock of Cashell and Glendalough are noticeably absent.

If I could only go to one place on the whole island, it would be Belfast.

Well, goodness, everyone has a different opinion! Thanks for your thoughts and insights. Also...what are the pros/cons of Belfast?

Yes please Ed, could you expand your post? Seems Belfast is under covered and visited.

It's the people and the history of the last fifty years. Parts of the place are still a wreck, the ecomony is in the tank, occupancy rate on commercial and residential buildings is horrible, the things they've done to try to attact tourist are dismal failures (e.g., the Titanic yards, the concert hall). But the people! They've got a srew-you-we're-going-to-be-okay attitude that's going to overcome everything.....somehow. For whatever reason, I never went to Northern Ireland or the RoI until a year ago. I think they were my eighty-seventh and eight-eigth countries. We figured two days for Belfast and spent five. I slipped back last fall on a solo trip and spent another week. When I figure out a way to do it, I'm going again. I've long ago seen the must sees and museums of most of the world. Even in a new place, I make a survey of the tourist stuff and then plunge into the areas (and even the dives) and small villages that have seldom or never seen a tourist. I like to know what people are up to. The only place I can equate Belfast to is Beirut. It's going to be okay, too.....somehow. Offa the box. The whole Antrim coast ain't that shabbly either.

Belfast (and the whole Northern Ireland area) are making great efforts to attract tourism. One really great resource for information is a website called Belfast in Your Pocket (http://www.inyourpocket.com/northern-ireland/belfast). It's definitely on my next itinerary.

Tagging onto Ed's comments. Belfast is Ireland in concentrated form. In the nationalist community, traditions mean more somehow than they do in other parts of Ireland. Traditional Irish music, the Irish language, and the arts are still very important, even more than they are in the RoI. Spending time in the unionist community allows you to see there is another side to being Irish. A whole other set of traditions, many of them having nothing to do with what is normally associated with Irishness. Good people who are much more alike than either side would like to admit.

Im with Ed on this. I liked Dingle a lot but Belfast was a great place to visit. We took a Steves suggested Taxi tour arranged by our B&B hostess. They picked us up at the B&B and took us all over Belfast with the driver giving a running narrative.It was great.