My daughter is studying abroad at the University of Dublin for the fall semester. We are planning a visit arriving in Dublin over Thanksgiving break (arriving Tuesday and leaving on Sunday). My daughter will be in school Tues, Wed and Thurs, but traveling with us Fri, Sat and Sun. Any suggestions/tips?
Favorite restaurant: Bank on College Green (right next to Trinity College). It’s very small, so reservations are helpful. Also FX Buckley’s - if you are meat eaters. They have several locations, but we like the one at Parkgate. It’s usually less crowded and conveniently next to Nancy Hand’s pub which has live trad music on Saturdays. Much less touristy than the Temple Bar places.
For outside of Dublin: Will you have a car? If not, we’ve done two bus day tours - Glendalough and Kilkenney with Collins Day Tours and Belfast and Giant’s Causeway with Kennedy and Carr.
We’ve also been to Cork. Not much to see, but a good starting point for Ring of Kerry tours and Blarney Castle.
There is a lot of info on Ireland on the Rick Steves website. I heard him say in an interview that Ireland was his favorite country to travel in.
We will have a car.
Your D may have already done the Guinness and Jameson tours in Dublin, but my young adult daughter enjoyed those (whiskey for breakfast, mmmm!)
You can head to Newgrange and the Hill of Tara which are only about an hour north of Dublin. Try to get the earliest morning tour for Newgrange since you’ll be there only a month before the solstice. Ireland has lots of ancient ruins and artifacts. There is even a special road sign for holy wells.
My D also studied in Ireland and toured everywhere. She especially loved Belfast and the giant’s causeway, and the wilder terrain of Donegal and Mayo. She also loved the cliffs of Moher.
She was in Cork and if you go there and stay overnight, please stay at the Garnish House. They have the most insanely good breakfast and it is included.
Any suggestions on where to stay/eat/things to do near Galway?
We stayed at the House Hotel which is very beautiful and hip. It’s rather a boutique hotel. You can walk anywhere from there. We ate once at Ard Bia which means “high food” in Irish. It was a wonderful farm-to-table restaurant. We also ate somewhere else over the river towards Saltair that was good too. Galway is quite beautiful!
chinablue, When we visited our son last Spring (May 2014) in Dublin, I planned our travels on places our son had mostly not seen or was planning to see, so we he wasn’t seeing everything twice. Exceptions to that were our first days activities, some pubs and Belfast. The very first day we got there we dropped our bags off at our apartment and took a train down to Bray and then took a looooong walk along the sea. We took a train back. That night we went out to a pub, ate and slept so well. The next day we did this tour http://www.newdublintours.com/ which was excellent. While we were in Dublin, we used public transportation but rented a car to go visit the rest of the country. The trains are excellent and fun to take. Stay at the small B&B’s - they can’t be beat! I perused tripadvisor for suggestions. We loved Ireland. Our son hopes to work there at some time in his life.
My dentist’s secretary said to go out further, into the country for Ireland.