Ireland Travel Guide
Curated by Our Guild Explorers · Updated August 2026
Ireland is a small, green, wind-blown island where the travelling is easy in every way but one: the roads take longer than you think. The whole island is smaller than the state of Maine, and yet a hundred kilometres of the Connemara coast can eat an afternoon, because the road is a lane, the walls come to the tarmac and there are cattle in the way. Everything is in English, the welcome is genuine rather than performed, the June light lasts until half past ten at night, and the country’s two great pleasures — a long day in wild country and a long evening in a warm pub — are never far apart. This chapter covers the whole island: Dublin and the east, Galway and Connemara, Cork and Kerry, Sligo and Donegal, and Northern Ireland, which is a different country with a different currency and no border to tell you so.
Where to stay — the Guild’s Ireland guides
Four full “where to stay” guides, each with honest picks by style and a plain word about cobbles, lifts and noise — plus our month-by-month guide to timing the trip.
Where to Stay in Dublin ›
The flat Georgian half around St Stephen’s Green, quiet Ballsbridge, and the cobbled lanes you should visit but not sleep in.
Where to Stay in Galway ›
The Latin Quarter against the Salthill seafront — which side suits which traveller, and where the music keeps you awake.
Where to Stay in Killarney ›
The natural base for the Ring of Kerry and the Gap of Dunloe — town-centre convenience against the quieter lakeside and Kenmare-road places.
Where to Stay in Cork ›
A compact island city centre, the hills above it, and which side of the River Lee actually suits an early start for Kinsale and West Cork.
Best Time to Visit Ireland ›
Month by month, with rain days, daylight hours and the weekends that empty every hotel in the country.
Bases that actually work: Dublin for the east; Galway for Connemara, the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher; Killarney, or quieter Kenmare, for Kerry; Sligo or southwest Donegal for the northwest; Belfast, or Portrush, for the north. Two bases in ten days beats five. Irish beds come in three kinds — town hotels with a bar the whole place uses, family-run B&Bs with a cooked breakfast included, and Georgian or Victorian country house hotels in their own parkland, which are often better value than an equivalent city room. Ask any of them two questions before booking: how many steps there are from the street or the car to the room and whether a lift serves the whole way, and, in the country, what time the kitchen stops — many close at half past eight.
One diary note: a handful of weekends empty a whole region of rooms. Rugby internationals in Dublin, the All-Ireland finals in September, university graduation weeks, the Galway Races in late July, the Rose of Tralee in August and St Patrick’s weekend in March all do it. If your dates are fixed, book the room before the flight.
Elsewhere on this page, where we mention a town we have not yet written a full guide for, the link goes straight to that town’s hotels through our Trip.com partner.
Ireland at a glance
Wild coast within an hour of a good dinner, a language you already speak, and a national habit of talking to strangers — the plain facts first.
The regions of Ireland
Five parts of the island, each with a different character and a different amount of driving in it. Where the Guild has written a full guide the link goes to it; everywhere else it goes to that town’s hotels through our Trip.com partner.
Dublin & the east
Almost every trip begins in Dublin, and it should. The Georgian half of the city — St Stephen’s Green, Merrion Square, Trinity College, the National Gallery and the National Museum — is flat, compact and walkable in a morning. Half an hour south, the Wicklow mountains open into bog and lake, with the monastic ruins and round tower of Glendalough at the head of a wooded valley. Forty minutes north, the Boyne Valley holds Newgrange and Knowth, passage tombs built around 3200 BC — five centuries before the Great Pyramid — visited only by timed shuttle from the Brú na Bóinne centre, so book.
The west — Galway, Connemara & Mayo
Galway is the one Irish city everybody falls for: small, salt-blown and full of students, with music in the Latin Quarter pubs seven nights a week. It is also the gateway. West of it, Connemara is bog, quartzite mountain and sea inlet for fifty miles — the Twelve Bens, Kylemore Abbey on its lake, the harbour village of Roundstone, and Clifden as the natural base out there. Off the coast, the Aran Islands are a ferry from Rossaveal or a nine-minute flight from Inverin. South, in County Clare, the Burren is a grey limestone pavement full of Arctic and Mediterranean flowers side by side, and the Cliffs of Moher are magnificent and busy — go before nine or after six.
The southwest — Cork, Kerry & the peninsulas
Cork city is built on an island in the River Lee and thinks of itself as a rival capital; the English Market, a covered Victorian food hall trading since 1788, is the best single hour of eating in Ireland. West of Cork the land breaks into peninsulas. Killarney is the tourist capital of Kerry — frankly commercial in the centre, and forgiven at once because Killarney National Park starts at the edge of town, with three lakes, an oak wood, a waterfall and native red deer, free to walk into. The Ring of Kerry is the 179-kilometre circuit of the Iveragh peninsula; the Dingle peninsula north of it is smaller, wilder and, we think, better. Kenmare makes a quieter base than Killarney for both.
The northwest — Sligo & Donegal
This is where Irish people go when they want the coast to themselves. Sligo sits under the flat-topped limestone bulk of Benbulben, in country W. B. Yeats wrote about all his life and is buried in, at Drumcliffe. North of that, Donegal is the largest, emptiest and most weather-beaten county in the Republic — a ragged coastline of headlands and white strands, with the sea cliffs at Slieve League rising some 600 metres, roughly three times the height of the Cliffs of Moher and with a fraction of the visitors. Much of west Donegal is Gaeltacht, so road signs are in Irish only and your satnav may disagree with the signpost. Distances are long and the roads slow: give this corner three or four nights rather than one.
Northern Ireland — a different country
The six counties of Northern Ireland are part of the United Kingdom. That means pounds sterling rather than euro, miles per hour rather than kilometres, and a separate set of public holidays — and it means nothing at all at the border itself, which you cross without stopping and usually without noticing. Belfast is a solid Victorian city that has spent twenty-five years remaking itself: the Titanic Quarter museum stands on the slipway where the ship was built, the black-taxi tours of the political murals are handled with more candour than you might expect. From there the Causeway Coastal Route runs north through the Glens of Antrim to the basalt columns of the Giant’s Causeway, past Carrick-a-Rede and Dunluce Castle to the golf links at Portrush. Derry keeps the only complete city walls in Ireland, walkable in about an hour.
Getting around — the car, the train and the left-hand side
The biggest planning mistake in Ireland is underestimating how long the small roads take. Here is what actually happens.
Dublin Airport is the main door
Dublin (DUB) takes the great majority of transatlantic arrivals. Two things are worth knowing. Dublin and Shannon both offer US preclearance: you clear United States immigration before boarding and land in the States as a domestic arrival, which is a kindness if you are connecting but means being at the airport a good three hours before a US departure. And there is still no train or tram to the airport. A taxi to the city runs roughly €25 to €35 and takes twenty-five to forty minutes; the Aircoach and Dublin Express coaches leave every fifteen minutes or so for about €10, with proper luggage holds. If your trip is the west or southwest, look hard at Shannon (SNN) instead — an hour and a quarter from Galway, an hour and three quarters from Killarney, and never a motorway around Dublin.
The trains are a wheel with no rim
Irish Rail is genuinely good at one thing: the centre of Dublin to the centre of another city. From Heuston, Cork is about two hours fifty, Galway about two hours forty-five, Killarney about three hours twenty and Westport about three and a half; from Connolly, Belfast is about two hours on the cross-border Enterprise and Sligo about three. What the network cannot do is move you around the edge of the island. There is no coastal line: Galway to Killarney by rail means changing at Limerick and losing most of a day, and Sligo to Donegal has no railway at all. Treat the train as the way to reach a region and something else as the way to travel within it, and book online in advance — walk-up fares are always dearest. Where the rails stop, Bus Éireann and the private coaches take over, but rural services may run twice a day and not at all on winter Sundays, so read the actual timetable.
Hiring a car: the honest briefing
You will be driving on the left, changing gear with your left hand, with the mirror on the wrong side. Most people settle within a day; the danger points are the first roundabout after landing on no sleep, and pulling out of a car park after lunch, when habit sends you to the right. A manual gearbox is the default here — automatics are a minority of the fleet, cost meaningfully more and must be booked well ahead for summer. On insurance, read this twice: many US credit-card collision damage waivers specifically exclude the Republic of Ireland. If you mean to decline the desk’s cover on the strength of your card, get written confirmation from the issuer before you travel, and expect a large hold on your card regardless.
What the roads are actually like
Three tiers, and they are very different animals. Motorways radiate from Dublin and are wide and fast: Dublin to Galway is 208 km in about two hours fifteen, Dublin to Cork 257 km in about three hours, Dublin to Belfast 167 km in about two. Regional and local roads are where the scenery is and where the time goes — a lane and a half wide, hedged or walled to the tarmac, no shoulder to pull onto, blind bends, farm gates and the real possibility of a tractor or a herd of cattle. Reckon on 50 to 60 km/h as a genuine average there, whatever the sign says. Limits are in kilometres per hour in the Republic — 120 on motorways, 100 on national roads, 80 on regional roads and, since February 2025, 60 on rural local roads — and in miles per hour in Northern Ireland. Fuel runs about €1.75 to €1.90 a litre, roughly $7.50 a US gallon.
Tolls, and two drives that need a plan
Most Irish motorway tolls are paid at a barrier by card or coin. The exception catches nearly every visitor: the M50 around Dublin has no barriers, only cameras, and must be paid online at eflow.ie by 8pm the following day or a penalty follows you home through the hire company. As for the famous drives: the Ring of Kerry is a 179-kilometre loop from Killarney and a full day, not a morning; coaches run it anticlockwise through Killorglin, Cahersiveen and Sneem, so drive it the same way and you will never meet one head-on on a blind bend. The Slea Head Drive on Dingle is only 47 kilometres but genuinely narrow, and is signposted clockwise for that reason. There is no shame at all in taking a small-group coach for any of the three and keeping the car for flatter days.
The weather, and what it really means
Mild, wet, windy and changeable — but not in the way most visitors picture before they arrive.
Milder than the latitude suggests
Dublin lies further north than Newfoundland and the Gulf Stream keeps it from behaving that way. Summer afternoons run 17 to 20°C (63 to 68°F), and days above 25°C are rare enough to make the newspapers. Winter days sit around 5 to 9°C (41 to 48°F), and lying snow is unusual outside the hills. Ireland has almost no hot weather and almost no cold weather: one warm layer, one waterproof shell and shoes with real grip will carry you through any month of the year.
The rain, in numbers and in practice
Dublin gets about 750 millimetres a year over roughly 150 days — less than Boston, New York or Atlanta. The west is a different matter: parts of Kerry, Connemara and Donegal take 1,400 millimetres or more across some 220 days. What the totals miss is the pattern. Irish rain mostly arrives as showers off the Atlantic that soak everything for ten or fifteen minutes and then clear to hard bright sun, four or five times a day. Bring a waterproof with a hood that stays up rather than an umbrella — the wind on any headland will destroy an umbrella in seconds.
Daylight is the real seasonal difference
Not the temperature — the light. In late June, Dublin sunset is around ten at night with usable brightness until nearly half past ten, later still in the northwest; you can finish a long drive, eat a proper dinner and still walk a beach afterwards. In late December the same city gets about seven and a half hours, sunrise near half past eight and dark by a quarter past four, which makes a winter sightseeing day one museum and one lunch. Irish country roads have no street lighting and often no white line, so this decides the whole shape of a trip.
One honest note: the coast makes its own weather, and forecasts more than two days out are of limited use. Build a trip with alternatives rather than a fixed plan. Our month-by-month guide to visiting Ireland goes through it all properly, with rain days and daylight hours.
Food, pubs and the session
What to eat, when the kitchen closes, and how a pub actually works.
What Ireland is genuinely good at
Grass-fed beef and lamb first — the cattle are outdoors most of the year, and it shows in the meat and in the butter, which is yellow for a reason. Then shellfish: oysters from Galway Bay and Carlingford, mussels from Connemara, crab from Donegal, langoustines landed at Dingle and Castletownbere. A bowl of seafood chowder with brown bread in a harbour pub is the national dish nobody writes down, and at €10 to €14 it is often the best value on the menu.
The full Irish, and the eating clock
Nearly every B&B and most hotels include a cooked breakfast: back rashers, sausages, black and white pudding, egg, grilled tomato, toast and strong tea. That helps with the other thing, which is that the Irish eating clock is earlier than visitors expect. Pub food generally runs from noon to about half past eight; a village kitchen may stop at eight, or not exist at all. Book anywhere good, even in a small town, and if you are driving a long day, eat at half past six rather than eight.
How a pub works, and how a session works
You order at the bar and pay as you go; table service exists in bigger places but is not the norm. A pint of stout is poured in two stages and takes a couple of minutes to settle — the barman has not forgotten you. Tipping at the bar is not expected; in a restaurant it is, at ten to twelve and a half per cent, unless a service charge is on the bill. A traditional session is not a performance: musicians gather in a corner from about half past nine and play sets of reels and jigs facing one another, with no set list and often no payment beyond drinks. Sit near but not among them, applaud at the end of a set rather than between tunes, and when somebody starts a slow air the room goes genuinely quiet — and so should you. One warning if you are driving to a session: the drink-driving limit is low and enforced with random breath testing, on country roads as much as in town, and one drink can put an average adult near it. Book a taxi, nominate a driver, or sleep within walking distance.
What Ireland costs in 2026
Ireland is not a cheap country, and Dublin is the expensive part of it. Honest euro figures for the Republic; Northern Ireland prices are in pounds sterling.
What a bed costs
Dublin is the outlier and has been for years. A comfortable three- or four-star double in the city centre runs roughly €180 to €290 a night from May to September, falling to something like €120 to €170 in January and February, and going well beyond that on a rugby weekend. Galway in summer is €150 to €230; Killarney and Cork a little less at €130 to €210; a country B&B double with breakfast included is usually €100 to €140. Rates include VAT at 13.5 per cent on accommodation and — unlike much of Europe — Ireland charges no tourist or bed tax anywhere, so the price you are quoted is the price you pay.
What a day costs
Two people travelling comfortably but not extravagantly — a mid-range hotel or good B&B with breakfast, a pub lunch, a proper dinner with a glass of wine, one paid attraction and fuel — should budget €240 to €320 a day for the couple outside Dublin, and €300 to €400 in the capital in summer. Travelling simply, with B&Bs, one restaurant meal a day and free attractions, brings it to €160 to €220. Car hire adds €45 to €120 a day before fuel and tolls.
What the sights cost, and what is free
Paid attractions are moderate by European standards: the Guinness Storehouse about €30 to €36 depending on the time slot, the Book of Kells and the Long Room about €27, the Cliffs of Moher €12 to €15 an adult pre-booked including the car park, Muckross House about €11. What is free is remarkable: the National Museum of Ireland on three Dublin sites, the National Gallery, Killarney, Glenveagh and Connemara national parks, every beach and headland, the walls of Derry, and most of the country’s ruined abbeys and stone forts.
Ireland travel FAQ
How many days do you need in Ireland?
Ten days is the honest minimum for a first trip taking in both coasts, and fourteen is better. A workable ten-day shape is three nights in Dublin, three in Galway with a day in Connemara, three in Killarney or Kenmare for Kerry, and a last night near the airport. With a single week, take one side of the country rather than both. Ireland is small on the map and slow on the ground, and a hundred kilometres of regional road with tractors, sheep and stone walls takes far longer than the same distance in France or Spain.
Do I need to hire a car in Ireland?
For Dublin, no — a car is a liability there, and the city is walkable and well served by tram and rail. For Connemara, the Ring of Kerry, the Dingle peninsula, west Cork and Donegal a car is close to essential, because the buses that serve them run two or three times a day and not at all on winter Sundays. Three things to remember when you book: you will be driving on the left, a manual gearbox is the default and automatics must be reserved early and cost more, and many US credit-card collision waivers specifically exclude the Republic of Ireland.
What currency does Ireland use?
The Republic of Ireland uses the euro. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom and uses pounds sterling — a different currency and a different jurisdiction, though there is no border checkpoint and you may not notice you have crossed. Cards and phone payments work almost everywhere on both sides, including in small rural pubs. When a card machine offers to charge you in US dollars rather than euro or sterling, decline and pay in the local currency.
When is the best time to visit Ireland?
May, June and September, and it is not a close contest. They give the longest useful daylight, the best odds of a dry afternoon, every attraction and rural restaurant open, and rates and crowds below the July and August peak. June is the standout for light: in Dublin the sun does not set until around ten at night, with usable brightness until nearly half past ten. Winter is quiet and often good value for Dublin, Galway, Cork and Belfast, but the daylight is short and a good many rural attractions and restaurants close from November to March.
Does it really rain all the time in Ireland?
It rains often and rarely for long. Dublin gets about 750 millimetres a year over roughly 150 days, which is less than many American cities; parts of Kerry, Connemara and Donegal take 1,400 millimetres or more across some 220 days. The pattern matters more than the total: showers come in off the Atlantic, soak everything for fifteen minutes and move on, four or five times a day, with bright sun in between. Bring a proper waterproof with a hood rather than an umbrella. Summer afternoons run 17 to 20°C and winter days 5 to 9°C, with snow rare outside the hills.
Is Northern Ireland a separate country, and can I drive there from Dublin?
Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom; the Republic of Ireland is an independent state and an EU member. You can drive between them freely — no border posts and no checks — and the giveaway is usually that speed limit signs switch from kilometres per hour to miles per hour and prices switch from euro to pounds sterling. Tell your car hire company you intend to cross, as some policies restrict it or charge a small fee,. Americans and Canadians need no visa for either jurisdiction, but the UK’s Electronic Travel Authorisation rules have been changing, so check official guidance before flying into Belfast rather than driving up from Dublin.
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