My husband and I will have 9 glorious days on the western coast and plan on flying out of Dublin. Since we will only have a few hours in the afternoon and evening before a 9am flight the next morning should we ditch the car and stay at the airport or stay in town and taxi to the airport in the early morning? My husband is most interested in the nightlife around Temple bar area.
Ditch the car and stay in town. No reason to waste your last evening hanging out by the airport.
Agreed - drop the car at the airport and buy a roundtrip airport bus ticket. The airport bus goes straight to and from the airport in no time. See the Temple Bar area if that what you really want to do and then go back to the airport in the morning. I can't imagine anything more different from Western Ireland than Temple Bar but at least you can say you saw it.
We have recently discovered that the hotels at the airport (at least the Premier in Swords) are much more economical than downtown, about 1/2 if you get their 39 Euro double rate. So we canceled our cancelable 73 Euro reservation, and rebooked. So after 1 week driving thru Northern Ireland, we will ditch the car at the airport rental lot late afternoon, check into the Premier....repack for the AM flight, then the 4 of us will either taxi or bus downtown for our last evening in Ireland. The 30-40 euros we saved on the lodging will pay for a chunk of the evening festivities! We will grab a pub meal downtown, then head over to Cobblestone for some final great Trad and Guiness! We would rather taxi back to the hotel late evening than hope to make a taxi or bus trip to the airport from the hotel early morning...rush hour traffic and all!
Will report in on how it worked out when we get back the end of Oct! D.
Thanks so much for all the good advice. Sounds like getting rid of the car is the first thing to do and I do like the idea of grabbing a bus or cab into town and not having to worry about the commute early the next morning. My husband and I are all business when it is time to get to the airport so we don't want it hanging over our heads on our last night on the Emerald Isle!