IRELAND · ÉIRE
Wild coast, ancient stone, and a good night out.
From the Cliffs of Moher to the Giant’s Causeway, Dublin’s pubs to the Ring of Kerry. Day tours, whiskey distilleries, coastal drives and the back roads in between.
Where to begin
Choose your Ireland.
One small island, four very different trips. The Atlantic west, the ancient east, the capital, and the north. Start with the one that sounds most like your week.
Only in Ireland
The cliffs, the causeway, the book.
Castles and coastlines turn up all over Europe. A 700-foot Atlantic wall, forty thousand basalt columns laid down by a giant, and a 1,200-year-old book that still stops people in their tracks. Those three are Ireland’s alone, and you can build a whole trip around them.
The Atlantic edge
The Cliffs of Moher
Seven hundred feet of sheer rock dropping straight into the Atlantic, with nothing beyond but open ocean until America. On a clear day you can see the Aran Islands and the hills of Connemara. On a wild one the spray comes back up over the edge. It is the single most-visited natural sight in Ireland, and it earns it.
- 1 Dublin to Cliffs of Moher, including Wild Atlantic Way and Galway
- 2 From Dublin: Cliffs of Moher, Burren & Galway City Day Tour
- 3 Dublin to Cliffs of Moher, Burren, Wild Atlantic Way, Galway Tour
Forty thousand stones
The Giant’s Causeway
Forty thousand interlocking basalt columns step down into the sea, most of them perfect hexagons. Geology calls it a sixty-million-year-old lava flow; the locals will tell you the giant Finn McCool built it to reach Scotland. There are only a couple of formations like it on earth, and this is the one with the myth attached.
- 1 Dublin to Belfast Black Cab, Dunluce Castle and Giant’s Causeway
- 2 Dublin to Dunluce Castle, Giant’s Causeway, Dark Hedges & Belfast
- 3 Dublin to Belfast Titanic, Dunluce Castle & Giant’s Causeway Tour
Twelve hundred years old
The Book of Kells
A 1,200-year-old gospel manuscript, every page inked and gilded by monks by hand, kept under glass at Trinity College Dublin. Upstairs is the Long Room, a barrel-vaulted library of two hundred thousand old books that looks like it was built for a film. You cannot see either anywhere else, because there is nothing else like them.
- 1 Dublin Book of Kells, Castle and Molly Malone Statue Guided Tour
- 2 Dublin: Fast-Track Book of Kells Ticket & Dublin Castle Tour
- 3 St Patrick’s Cathedral, Book of Kells and Dublin Castle Tour
The first day
The one almost everyone starts with.
If you’ve only got a day to spare, begin here. The most popular experience in the country, and the one most first-time visitors tick off before anything else.
The big names
Ireland’s Most Popular Tours
The Cliffs of Moher, the Guinness Storehouse, the Ring of Kerry, the Giant’s Causeway. The days most visitors come to Ireland for.
By region
Pick your part of Ireland.
Dublin for the pubs and the history. Galway for the music. Killarney for the lakes. Cork for the coast and the castles. Dingle for the far west. Belfast for the Causeway Coast.
By kind of day
Or choose how you’d rather see it.
A walking tour if you want the stories. A boat trip if you want the coast. Whiskey distilleries, trad sessions, castle days, ghost walks and the rest.
The famous drive
Around the Ring of Kerry.
The Lakes of Killarney, the Gap of Dunloe, the Skellig coast and a 179km loop of mountain and sea. If we had to pick three days in the southwest, these are them.
After the walking’s done
Whiskey, stout and a session.
A distillery tasting, a poured pint at the Guinness Storehouse, a pub crawl that ends with live trad. Three ways into the side of Ireland that only really starts after dark.
The wild west
Into Connemara.
Kylemore Abbey on its mirror lake, the Twelve Bens, bog roads and dry-stone walls running down to the sea. The emptiest, most cinematic corner of the west, and an easy day out from Galway.
Older than the pyramids
Ireland’s Ancient East.
Newgrange was built before Stonehenge. Glendalough’s monks were here before the Vikings. Medieval Kilkenny still has its castle and its lanes. The deep-history half of the island, most of it within a day of Dublin.
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