Where to go
Dublin
The literary city — Trinity College and the Book of Kells, the writers' museums — plus the National Museum and Gallery, both free, and the Guinness Storehouse for those who want it. Compact and walkable. Two to three days.
The Wild Atlantic Way
A signposted coastal route of over two thousand kilometres from Donegal to Cork. Nobody drives all of it: pick a section. The Dingle peninsula, Connemara and the Sligo coast are the most rewarding and the least crowded respectively.
The Cliffs of Moher and the Burren
Sea cliffs over two hundred metres high, and behind them a limestone karst landscape with a flora found nowhere else in Ireland. Go early or late; the middle of the day in summer is solid coaches. One day from Galway.
Galway and Connemara
A small city with the best traditional music scene in the country, and beyond it a landscape of bog, mountain and lake. Galway is also the easiest place to hear Irish spoken as an everyday language.
Kerry and the south-west
The Ring of Kerry, Killarney National Park and the Skellig islands offshore. Beautiful and busy: the Dingle peninsula next door offers the same landscape with a fraction of the traffic.
Belfast and the Causeway coast
Across the border in Northern Ireland, two hours from Dublin by train: the Giant's Causeway, the Antrim coast road and a city whose recent history the museums address directly rather than avoid.
Building the itinerary
- Three stops a week, no more. Every move costs half a day at minimum, often a whole one, and you see nothing of a place where you sleep one night.
- Alternate the pace. A dense city, then two quiet days: that is what makes travelling as a couple sustainable, especially if one of you lives there and works.
- Keep a buffer day before the flight home, in the departure city. Domestic transport delays are the leading cause of missed flights.
- Ask the person who lives there what they want to show you. Guidebook itineraries and the places that matter to them rarely overlap — and the second list is the better one.
Two reflexes that change a trip
Distances deceive. On a map two points look close; on the ground, road conditions, checkpoints and terrain double or triple the time. Plan fewer stops and more time at each.
Ask before photographing anyone, and never insist. Official buildings, soldiers, airports and bridges are best avoided almost everywhere — the most banal and most avoidable source of trouble.