Ireland: Dublin, Belfast, the Giant's Causeway and Kerry

1. Day 1: Arrive in Dublin

   Dublin Airport to your hotel in central Dublin

   • Drive about 30 min
   • Welcome dinner
   • Stay in Dublin
   Day 1 details

   Fly into Dublin Airport (DUB), about 10 km north of the city, and a driver meets you in arrivals for the drive to our central hotel, within walking distance of Trinity College and the River Liffey. Most overnight flights from North America land early in the morning and hotel rooms are usually ready in the afternoon, so the hotel keeps your bags and the day is yours to take gently: a walk through St Stephen's Green, a coffee off Grafton Street, or the National Museum of Archaeology on Kildare Street, free to enter, with the gold of Bronze Age Ireland and the preserved bog bodies. If you would rather sleep off the flight first, we can book an extra night before the trip at the same hotel. At about 6 pm your See Sight Tours guide meets the group for a short briefing on the route north to Belfast and round the west, then we walk together to a welcome dinner at a local restaurant.

   Included

   • Pick-up at Dublin Airport (DUB)
   • Welcome briefing with your guide
   • Welcome dinner

   Free time: Free until the evening briefing

2. Day 2: The Book of Kells and Georgian Dublin

   Trinity College, then Dublin on foot

   • Breakfast
   • Stay in Dublin
   Day 2 details

   We start at Trinity College on the first timed entry of the morning, before the queues build, to see the Book of Kells, the illuminated gospel book made by monks around 800 AD, and the exhibition on how its pages were written and painted. Your guide then walks the group through the city: Merrion Square and Fitzwilliam Square with their painted Georgian doors, Leinster House where the Irish parliament sits, the courtyards of Dublin Castle, Christ Church Cathedral and the streets above Wood Quay, where the Viking town stood. Lunch is your own choice, and the afternoon is free. Popular picks are the Guinness Storehouse at St James's Gate, Kilmainham Gaol (book ahead), the Little Museum of Dublin on St Stephen's Green, or a slow walk along the Liffey to the Ha'penny Bridge. In the evening your guide can point you to pubs with a traditional music session, away from the busiest bars of Temple Bar.

   Included

   • The Book of Kells at Trinity College, first timed entry
   • Guided walk of Dublin: Merrion Square, Leinster House, Dublin Castle, Christ Church Cathedral and Wood Quay

   Optional experiences

   • Guinness Storehouse
   • Kilmainham Gaol
   • Little Museum of Dublin

   Free time: Afternoon and evening free in Dublin

   Activity: About 3 hours on foot in the morning. The Old Library's Long Room is part-way through a long conservation project, so what is open beside the Book of Kells can change; we confirm before you travel.

3. Day 3: Newgrange, then north to Belfast

   Dublin to Bru na Boinne, then Belfast

   • Drive about 2.5 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Belfast
   Day 3 details

   We leave Dublin at about 8:15 am for Bru na Boinne in the Boyne Valley, about 50 minutes north, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the largest groups of Neolithic passage tombs in Europe. Visits start at the visitor centre, where a shuttle bus crosses the river to Newgrange, built around 3200 BC, older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid of Giza. A site guide takes small groups along the stone passage into the inner chamber, which the rising sun lights for a few mornings around the winter solstice; the guide recreates the effect with a lamp. After a sit-down lunch nearby it is about an hour and three quarters on the motorway to Belfast, across a border you will barely notice: the road signs change from kilometres to miles and the money from euros to pounds. We reach the hotel by mid-afternoon. The evening is free, and the Cathedral Quarter, with many of the city's pubs and restaurants, is a short walk away.

   Included

   • Bru na Boinne visitor centre and a guided visit inside Newgrange
   • Sit-down lunch in the Boyne Valley
   • Drive to Belfast with your guide

   Easier option: If the narrow passage is not for you, stay outside: the guide's talk at the entrance stone and the walk around the mound cover the same story.

   Free time: Evening free in Belfast

   Activity: The Newgrange passage is about 19 m long, narrow and low in places.

4. Day 4: Titanic Belfast and a city of two stories

   Titanic Quarter, the Falls Road and the Shankill Road, City Hall

   • Breakfast
   • Stay in Belfast
   Day 4 details

   We are at Titanic Belfast for one of the first entries of the morning, beside the slipways where Harland and Wolff built RMS Titanic and her sister Olympic. The galleries tell the story of the shipyard city as much as the ship, and the same ticket covers SS Nomadic, the small tender that carried passengers out to Titanic at Cherbourg, now in a dry dock nearby. After lunch on your own we spend the afternoon on Belfast's recent history. Two local guides, one from the nationalist community and one from the unionist community, walk the group along the Falls Road and the Shankill Road, past the murals and the peace wall that still separates them, with gates that are closed at night. They explain the Troubles and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement as people who lived through them, and they take any question. We finish at City Hall in the centre. The evening is free: the Victorian Crown Liquor Saloon and the restaurants of the Cathedral Quarter are an easy walk.

   Included

   • Titanic Belfast at opening, with SS Nomadic
   • Political history walk on the Falls Road and the Shankill Road with local guides from both communities
   • Belfast City Hall

   Optional experiences

   • Ulster Museum (free entry) and the Botanic Gardens
   • Crumlin Road Gaol

   Free time: Lunch, late afternoon and evening free

   Activity: About 3 hours on foot in the afternoon, on pavements.

5. Day 5: The Antrim coast and the Giant's Causeway

   Belfast along the Antrim Coast Road to Ballycastle and the Giant's Causeway, then Derry

   • Drive about 4 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Derry
   Day 5 details

   Today has about four hours of driving, spread from breakfast to early evening, because the Antrim Coast Road is the reason for the day and not a road to hurry. We leave Belfast at about 8:30 am and follow the shore north past Carrickfergus Castle, the Norman fortress on Belfast Lough, through Glenarm and Carnlough, where the road runs between the sea wall and white limestone cliffs. We stop in the Glens of Antrim for coffee and a short walk, then cross to Ballycastle for a sit-down lunch. After lunch we cross the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge on a timed ticket to the small island where salmon fishermen once worked; if you would rather not, or if wind closes the bridge, Ballintoy harbour just along the coast is the easy alternative. We reach the Giant's Causeway in the later afternoon, when the day tours from Dublin and Belfast are usually heading home, and spend about 90 minutes on the roughly 40,000 basalt columns, a UNESCO World Heritage Site formed by lava some 60 million years ago. Dunluce Castle is a photo stop on the way to Derry, about an hour west. The evening is free inside the walls.

   Included

   • The Antrim Coast Road, with stops at Carrickfergus, Carnlough and the Glens of Antrim
   • Sit-down lunch in Ballycastle
   • Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge (timed ticket)
   • Giant's Causeway visitor experience and about 90 minutes on the stones
   • Dunluce Castle photo stop

   Easier option: Skip the rope bridge and wait at Ballintoy harbour; at the Causeway, take the shuttle bus down and back instead of walking the road.

   More active option: Cross the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge to the island, and at the Causeway walk back up by the cliff-top path.

   Free time: Evening free in Derry

   Activity: The Causeway stones are uneven and slippery when wet; wear shoes with grip. Carrick-a-Rede closes in high wind.

   

6. Day 6: Derry's walls and the Bogside, then Donegal

   Derry to Donegal town, then Sligo

   • Drive about 2.5 h
   • Breakfast and dinner
   • Stay in Sligo
   Day 6 details

   Derry's walls, finished in 1619, are the only complete city walls left in Ireland, and at about 1.5 km around they make an easy first walk round the city. We walk the circuit in the morning with your guide, looking down from the bastions onto the Bogside. Then a local guide from the Bogside takes the group through the Museum of Free Derry and past the murals of the People's Gallery to the streets where British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civil rights marchers on Bloody Sunday, 30 January 1972, killing 13, with a fourteenth dying later, and explains what that day still means here. After lunch on your own we cross into the Republic and drive about an hour and a quarter to Donegal town, at the mouth of the River Eske, for Donegal Castle, the tower house of the O'Donnell chieftains with a Jacobean manor added by the Englishman who took it over. Then it is an hour south along Donegal Bay to Sligo, under the flat top of Benbulben, for dinner together.

   Included

   • Derry's city walls with your guide
   • The Bogside, the People's Gallery murals and the Museum of Free Derry with a local guide
   • Donegal Castle
   • Dinner together in Sligo

   Free time: Lunch free in Derry

   Activity: About 3 hours on foot in Derry, with some steps up to the walls.

7. Day 7: Yeats country, then Galway

   Sligo to Drumcliffe, then south to Galway

   • Drive about 2.5 h
   • Breakfast
   • Stay in Galway
   Day 7 details

   A slow start in Sligo, then ten minutes north to Drumcliffe churchyard, where W. B. Yeats is buried under the long flank of Benbulben, with the epitaph he wrote for himself: Cast a cold eye on life, on death. Horseman, pass by! If the weather is kind there is time for a short walk on the beach at Rosses Point before we head south. The drive to Galway is about two hours on fast roads through Mayo, with a coffee stop on the way, so we reach the city around lunchtime. After checking in and lunch on your own, your guide walks the group through the old town: Eyre Square, the pedestrian lanes of the Latin Quarter, Lynch's Window, St Nicholas' Collegiate Church, where Columbus is said to have prayed, and the Spanish Arch beside the River Corrib, with a look across the river mouth to the Claddagh. The evening is yours. Galway is known for its traditional music, and several pubs have a session on most nights.

   Included

   • Drumcliffe churchyard and the grave of W. B. Yeats
   • Guided walk of Galway: Eyre Square, the Latin Quarter, St Nicholas' Collegiate Church and the Spanish Arch

   Free time: Evening free in Galway

8. Day 8: Inis Mor, the largest Aran Island

   Galway to Rossaveal, ferry to Inis Mor and back

   • Drive about 1.5 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Galway
   Day 8 details

   We drive about 45 minutes west along the shore of Galway Bay to Rossaveal, in the Connemara Gaeltacht, for the ferry to Inis Mor, the largest of the three Aran Islands, about 40 minutes across the water. The islands are bare limestone, a continuation of the Burren, and Irish is still the language of daily life for most islanders. From the harbour at Kilronan a local minibus takes the group west past a maze of dry stone walls and tiny fields to Kilmurvey, where a rocky path climbs about a kilometre to Dun Aonghasa, a prehistoric stone fort built in rings around the edge of a sheer Atlantic cliff about 100 metres high. Lunch is a sit-down meal on the island. In the afternoon we stop at the ruined Seven Churches and look for seals at Port Chorruch before the ferry back. If strong wind cancels the ferry, we spend the day in Connemara instead and the lunch moves with us. Otherwise we are in Galway by early evening, with the night free for the music pubs or a quiet dinner by the river.

   Included

   • Return ferry from Rossaveal to Inis Mor
   • Island minibus tour of Inis Mor
   • Dun Aonghasa stone fort
   • The Seven Churches and the seal colony at Port Chorruch
   • Sit-down lunch on Inis Mor
   • Bike hire in Kilronan, for the active option

   Easier option: Skip the climb to Dun Aonghasa and spend the time at Kilmurvey, with its cafe, craft shops and small beach.

   More active option: Hire a bike in Kilronan (hire included) and cycle the roughly 7 km to Kilmurvey, join the group for Dun Aonghasa and lunch, then ride back to the harbour at your own pace.

   Free time: Evening free in Galway

   Activity: The ferry can be cancelled in strong wind; if it is, we spend the day in Connemara instead. The path to Dun Aonghasa is uneven and the cliff edge has no fence.

9. Day 9: The Burren, the Cliffs of Moher and the Shannon ferry

   Galway through the Burren to the Cliffs of Moher, ferry from Killimer to Tarbert, then Dingle

   • Drive about 5 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Dingle
   Day 9 details

   This is the longest day on the road and the one day over our four-hour cap: about 265 km and four and three quarter hours of driving, plus the ferry. It replaces a separate transfer day and follows the Clare coast rather than the motorway, and we break it into four parts. We leave Galway at about 8 am for the Burren, the bare limestone country south of Galway Bay, and stop at Poulnabrone, a portal tomb more than 5,000 years old. Then the Cliffs of Moher in the middle of the morning, before most of the day coaches from Dublin and Galway arrive. The cliffs rise up to 214 metres above the Atlantic, and we have about 90 minutes for the paths north to O'Brien's Tower and south along the edge, and the visitor centre built into the hill. A sit-down lunch follows in Doolin or Lahinch, then the car ferry from Killimer across the Shannon Estuary to Tarbert, twenty minutes on deck, where dolphins are sometimes seen. The last stretch runs through Tralee onto the Dingle Peninsula, and we reach Dingle town at about 5 pm.

   Included

   • Poulnabrone portal tomb in the Burren
   • Cliffs of Moher visitor experience and about 90 minutes on the cliff paths
   • Sit-down lunch in Doolin or Lahinch
   • The Killimer to Tarbert ferry across the Shannon Estuary

   Easier option: Stay by the visitor centre and the main viewing platform at the Cliffs, which are paved and close to the car park.

   More active option: Walk the cliff path south from the visitor centre towards Hag's Head for about 45 minutes and meet the vehicle further along.

   Free time: Evening free in Dingle

   Activity: The one day over our 4-hour driving cap, at about 4 hours 45 minutes, broken by four stops. Keep away from the unfenced cliff edge in wind.

   

10. Day 10: Slea Head and a night of music in Dingle

    Dingle around Slea Head and back by Gallarus

    • Drive about 1.5 h
    • Breakfast and dinner
    • Stay in Dingle
    Day 10 details

    The Slea Head Drive is a loop of about 47 km round the western tip of the Dingle Peninsula, and in our small minibus we take it clockwise, the direction the local signs ask for, with time to stop. We leave after breakfast past Ventry strand to the clochans, dry stone beehive huts, and stone forts near Fahan, then round Slea Head itself for the view out to the Blasket Islands, whose last islanders left in 1953. At Dun Chaoin the Blasket Centre tells their story and that of the books its islanders wrote about their lives. We come back by Ballyferriter and Gallarus Oratory, a small stone chapel shaped like an upturned boat and possibly more than a thousand years old, and are in Dingle town by lunchtime. The afternoon is free: the harbour, the small shops on Green Street and Main Street, or a walk out to the lighthouse at the mouth of the bay. Tonight we eat together and then go on to a pub with a traditional music session.

    Included

    • The Slea Head Drive with your guide
    • Beehive huts at Fahan
    • The Blasket Centre at Dun Chaoin
    • Gallarus Oratory
    • Dinner together, then a traditional music session in a Dingle pub

    Optional experiences

    • Boat trip around Dingle Bay or out to the Blasket Islands, weather permitting

    More active option: Walk the cliff-top stretch of the Dingle Way from Dun Chaoin towards Slea Head for about an hour, with the vehicle waiting at the end.

    Free time: Afternoon free in Dingle

    Activity: Dingle is in the Gaeltacht, so you will hear Irish spoken and see it first on the road signs.

11. Day 11: Killarney National Park and the train to Dublin

    Dingle to Muckross, Ladies View and Kenmare, then the train from Killarney to Dublin

    • Drive about 3.5 h
    • Breakfast, lunch and dinner
    • Stay in Dublin
    Day 11 details

    We leave Dingle at about 8:30 am and drive an hour and a quarter to Killarney National Park, set up in 1932 as the first national park in Ireland. Muckross House, a Victorian mansion on the shore of Muckross Lake, has a guided tour of its rooms, and its gardens run down to the water. A short walk through oak woods leads to Torc Waterfall. We then climb the Ring of Kerry road to Ladies View, named after Queen Victoria's ladies-in-waiting, who admired it in 1861, and cross Moll's Gap to Kenmare for a sit-down lunch. From Kenmare it is about 45 minutes back over the pass to Killarney station, about 160 km and three and a quarter hours of driving in all. Instead of four hours on the motorway, we take a mid-afternoon train to Dublin Heuston, about three and a quarter hours, usually with a change at Mallow and our luggage on board with us. We reach Dublin in the early evening, with time to check in before the farewell dinner, a short walk from our central hotel.

    Included

    • Muckross House guided tour and gardens
    • Torc Waterfall
    • Ladies View and Moll's Gap on the Ring of Kerry road
    • Sit-down lunch in Kenmare
    • Train from Killarney to Dublin Heuston
    • Farewell dinner in Dublin

    Easier option: Stay in the Muckross House gardens instead of the walk to Torc Waterfall.

    More active option: Climb the steps beyond Torc Waterfall for the view over the lakes, about 30 minutes up and back.

    Activity: We choose the train when the timetable for your dates is confirmed; if the best train leaves earlier, we shorten the Kenmare stop.

12. Day 12: Bull Island and home

    Central Dublin to North Bull Island, then Dublin Airport

    • Drive about 30 min
    • Breakfast
    Day 12 details

    The last morning is easy. Breakfast is at the hotel, and if your flight leaves after about 1 pm there is time for a walk with your guide on North Bull Island in Dublin Bay, on the way to the airport. The island is a sand spit that built up behind the Bull Wall, a sea wall finished in the 1820s to stop the harbour silting, and it now has a long beach at Dollymount Strand, dunes and salt marsh, with brent geese on the mudflats in winter. From there it is about 15 minutes to Dublin Airport (DUB). If you fly to the United States, allow extra time: Dublin has US preclearance, so you clear US immigration and customs before you board. Flights to Canada do not use it. Your guide sees the group to the airport, and anyone staying on is dropped back in the city centre; we can book extra nights at the same hotel. Book a flight leaving after about 1 pm to include the walk, or we go straight to the airport for an earlier one.

    Included

    • Walk on North Bull Island and Dollymount Strand, for flights after about 1 pm
    • Drop-off at Dublin Airport (DUB)

    Easier option: For a morning flight we go straight from the hotel to the airport, about 30 minutes.

    Activity: Book a flight leaving after about 1 pm to include the Bull Island walk.

    

Wildlife and weather: May to September brings the longest days, with daylight past 9:30 pm in June, which suits the late visit to the Giant's Causeway. April and October are quieter and cooler, with shorter evenings and a higher chance that the Inis Mor ferry or the Carrick-a-Rede bridge is stopped by wind. Puffins nest on the Cliffs of Moher from about April to July, and dolphins are sometimes seen from the Shannon ferry.

• Dublin2 nights
• Belfast2 nights
• Derry1 night
• Sligo1 night
• Galway2 nights
• Dingle2 nights
• Dublin1 night