<p>DH and I are heading to Ireland this fall and I figured I’d ask the experts here if there are any tour companies you recommend (or want to avoid). We prefer a small group tour rather than big buses, and frankly, I am fine with driving. Just don’t want to be rushed and would like to take advantage of nice weather if we get it.</p>
<p>Many thanks!</p>
<p>We took a Celtic Tours trip in 2003 and loved it.
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<p>At first we were unsure about a bus trip. But we realized with 5 and luggage it would be tough to fit in a rental. And driving on the “wrong” side of the road was not appealing. Guess what? We really liked the bus tour. It was small (about 30 people?), and on our trip about half were part of same extended family. The bus driver also acted as tour guide. </p>
<p>Extra bonus - we were up high and could see over the miles and miles of hedgerow bushes to see beautiful scenery. We realized that in car it would not have been possible.</p>
<p>While/IF in Dublin the “hop on hop off” bus is a good way to see the city. You can also take the train to many cities/towns/destinations throughout the country. I can not remember the tour company we used when we visited the Blarney Castle, Cliffs of Moher, Ring of Kerry, etc. My wife has over 100 relatives living throughout the country so we usually stay with her cousins. We have also hired our own personal travel guides and that has worked out well, since I also hate driving over there! Your hotels and/or B and B can arrange tours with reputable companys in advance of your arrival.</p>
<p>For our tour we did not know there was an option for a 2nd night in Dublin. We would have done that - it was a great city, very walkable. We definitely would not have attempted driving.</p>
<p>We are going soon and just renting a car and driving around. If you have no problem with driving, why not do that? Lots of good touring books out there and getting lost is half the fun they tell me. Check out tripadvisor- go to the forums. There are many threads about tours.</p>
<p>Everyone says not to drive in Dublin.</p>
<p>Dublin is fantastic and highly recommended. There are a couple of hop-on city tours available (one is red and one is green). You see their buses making the circuit all day. I go there on business occasionally. When I stay the weekend, I can take day trips to nearly any of the famous sites/cities - the only variable is when you get back (late afternoon or well into the evening). There is a tourist center in an old church just off of Grafton Street near Trinity college. Several tour companies have on-site booths and representatives. I most recently took Paddywagon tours to Glendalough, Wicklow and Kilkenny - recommended.</p>
<p>However you go, see if you have time for a tour along the cliffs of Moher, starting outside Gus O’Connor’s pub in Doolin. They are given by Pat Sweeny, who also runs a farmhouse B & B with his wife. Don’t miss it!</p>
<p><a href=“Doolin Cliff Walks”>Doolin Cliff Walks;
<p>It’s cheap, but I don’t know how much since it was free the day we went (National Trails Day or something like that).</p>
<p>The Irish Tourist Board has numerous brochures on self drive and escorted tours. If it is just you and your husband, I would suggest a self drive tour. You can follow the itinerary of an escorted tour. This will give you an idea of how much driving and sightseeing you can cover each day. You can stay in farmhouses and cottages as well as B&B’s and take daily tours around the area by yourselves. In cities such as Dublin, there are lots of 1/2 and full day sightseeing tours you can sign up for when you arrive. Greenwitch offered a great suggestion abou the Cliffs of Moher. The castles, Newgrange, Guinness, distilleries, universities, all offer tours. How long are you going for? Where are you flying into and out of? Did you secure your car rental?</p>
<p>Fall is a wonderful time to go to Ireland. There’s a bank holiday at the end of October and traditionally, many things close or slow down service after then and don’t restart until Easter week. Newgrange covers it’s neolithic stones with blankets then in case of frost. October is a great time to go especially if you are before that bank holiday!</p>
<p>H and I rented a car and the only trouble we had was getting into cities. Galway was slow (and I can’t imagine how slow it would be in the summer), Dublin was nearly impossible. You want public transport for that! Driving on the left was OK, but the narrowness of some of the roads was scary.</p>
<p>Unlike the U.S., the majority of the rental cars in Ireland have manual, stick shift transmissions. I drove a stick most of my young adult life but, even for me, shifting “left handed” took a little getting used to. My wife never learned to drive a manual transmission.</p>
<p>I drive a stick shift, though doing it w/ my left hand will be interesting! Have driven in Australia, so am used to the left side of the road part. My English ILs would be appalled if I couldn’t drive on the left side. :)</p>
<p>Good suggestions on the Dublin local transit. We are flying in to Glasgow, taking the train/ferry from Glasgow to Holyhead to Dublin, will be in Ireland for eight days and then fly home from Dublin. </p>
<p>We are doing a 3-4 day Rabbie’s tour in the Scottish Highlands/Isle of Skye – DH has done a tour with them before and liked the small minibus-sized tour. Not finding similar tours we like as well in Ireland so far. We are going after the High Holidays for our 30th anniversary (which actually is in December, but we’d like to go while there is daylight!).</p>
<p>Checked USAA rates for Hertz and I can get a subcompact stickshift car for 63 Euro/week. Since it’s just the two of us, that should be fine. I want the smallest car I can get. Will need to check w/them to see if our USAA MasterCard covers the super CDW, and if we can download Irish maps on our GPS. May be better off getting the local Neverlost, even though they charge and arm & a leg.</p>
<p>I am the resident photographer, so a big part of the trip for me is getting good shots. They just don’t happen on a bus. I also need to be careful of my energy levels, so a tour group may not necessarily be a good thing – I will want to roam, but slowly. After 30 years, DH has learned to take those times to relax and catch a quick nap. :)</p>
<p>One of my cousins sent me info on the Tipperary ancestors last night, including a copy of a letter that the niece of my great great grandmother sent to her in 1912, which described her trip back to Clonmel and environs. The niece had gone back to Ireland to visit family and returned on the Lusitania. Also sent a pic of the GGM – now we know where my Dad got his eyes, eyebrows and nose from, which all five of us kids acquired! </p>
<p>Am hoping to find some of the places she mentioned and take pics for my cousin, who is a very serious geneologist (and has amassed a huge collection of research done pre-internet).</p>
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<p>Careful about this price. Earlier this summer we reserved a subcompact in Ireland from Hertz online and were quoted a similar price for the rental. I declined the 17 Euro/day CDW that was offered online because that seemed quite steep, and I believed I was covered by the CDW I get through my American Express account. Got to the ticket counter at the Dublin airport and the clerk refused to rent me the car unless I bought their CDW for 26 Euro/day. He claimed “foreign insurance” was “not good in Ireland,” and unless I had proof of an insurance policy that was good in Ireland, he couldn’t rent me the car. “That’s just the way it works in Ireland,” he said. Naturally I did not have my American Express contract with me. I felt pretty trapped as we had planned our entire itinerary around car travel. He finally found a “discount” through the airline we had arrived on (American) which brought the CDW down to 22 Euro/day. I swallowed hard and paid for it because I felt I really had no other choice. My thought is that this is how they make their money: the rental price is a “come on,” and their profit is in selling you insurance at inflated prices.</p>
<p>Apart from that sour experience, I found driving in Ireland to be a breeze. We didn’t drive in Dublin; everyone had advised against it (though to be honest, just observing the Dublin traffic while walking around the city, it didn’t appear to be that bad, though parking was certainly extremely tight which probably makes a car more of a hindrance than a help in sightseeing in the city). Outside of Dublin, however, there’s not all that much traffic, the roads are mostly good to very good, the countryside is quite lovely, and I found driving to be much less of a challenge than I had expected. I probably hadn’t driven with a stick in 20 years or so, never with the stick on my left, and I’d never driven on the left side of the road. After the first couple of awkward turns and counterintuitive clockwise roundabouts, I got the hang of it pretty quickly. It did take constant vigilance on the first day, however, which I found quite tiring. By the second day it was much easier. Your brain already knows all the right moves, it just needs to invert them from left to right and right to left. But that’s something it can do. Brains are quite remarkable that way. </p>
<p>Definitely see the Cliffs of Moher. That was a highlight for us. Also really enjoyed a “literary pub crawl” in Dublin led by two actors who tell stories about Dublin’s many famous writers and act out scenes from their plays and novels, stopping at several of the pubs they frequented, in most cases just long enough to down a pint of Guinness.</p>
<p>We had a similar experience renting a car. We knew our credit card would cover collision, but the agent told us that it wouldn’t work in Ireland or Israel. Didn’t really believe him but we didn’t have the new SIM card for our phone so we couldn’t call and check. It nearly doubled the cost! And when we did get to verify with our credit card company they said it wasn’t true.</p>
<p>Also, photograph that car all over before you step in, with airport features clearly in the background - AND after you return it. Who knows what tricks they may pull? Gate agents here make a commission on all the bs things they get you to add and that must be true in Ireland too. </p>
<p>My H found free maps for our GPS online somewhere. They didn’t include the north but we didn’t go there anyway. Still, driving to and from Newgrange there were a few roads missing but it didn’t cause any trouble. We enjoyed Newgrange and the Hill of Tara very much and they are pretty close to Dublin.</p>
<p>Same thing happened to us! they said credit card insurance didn’t cover collision in Ireland, Israel, Italy, and Jamaica? Or some similar list.</p>
<p>Also they “found” a discount through the airline, I think. It’s a little suspicious!</p>
<p>^^ By the way, I believe the person speaking to the next Hertz agent to my right at the counter in the Dublin airport had an even worse car rental experience. She was from the UK and and had booked her rental car online there. She had prepaid the CDW that was offered to her online, but it was through a third-party insurer, not Hertz. She had the paperwork in hand, but she got the same line: “This is foreign insurance, not valid in Ireland. We can’t rent you the car unless you buy our insurance.” She was practically in tears but she caved and paid the 26 Euro/day on top of whatever she had already paid online. The Hertz agent assured her the online insurer “will probably give you a refund.” I’ll bet they didn’t. I’ll bet her insurance was valid and it was probably a prepaid, no-refund deal.</p>
<p>Here’s where I hope that being a longstanding USAA customer will do some good – am going to check on getting a copy of whatever policy language applies. DH is good at arguing this stuff and travels overseas a lot, so I have some confidence that he can work his way through this. IIRC, we did pay for CDW in Israel out of an abundance of caution. We never pay for it here in the US and didn’t do so when we drove in Australia or Germany.</p>
<p>I did assume the low rental rate is a teaser and that the real cost will probably be 3x that amount.</p>
<p>The joys of a digital camera – it’s easy to photograph the car at the airport/pickup!</p>
<p>Greenwitch – I just looked up Pat Sweeney’s walks and that looks like a definite must-do!! Am also looking into staying at their farm.</p>
<p>Just be sure to check with your agent about coverage under your automobile and umbrella policies!! It is extremely common for most consumer auto policies to only be valid in the U.S. and Canada!! Some companies such as Chubb, and other high-end insurers, include global coverage. But if you buy insurance based upon talking lizards and girls with funky hair and price guns - probably not.</p>
<p>I in no way condone bait and switch pricing, but how many of us would accept an oral statement that an unseen foreign insurance policy would provide cover if someone was renting our car? Think about it - if you get in an accident over there - unless you are arrested, which would only happen if a criminal act occurred, how would they collect? Even if they want to, the cost and effort would be huge - easier to just say you must buy our insurance. But they should be up front about it.</p>
<p>^For most posting here, it wasn’t foreign insurance, but credit card coverage. and it does seem to only occur in a few countries, for whatever reason.</p>
<p>I always use Dan Dooley Car Rentals. Including CDI, the rates seem to run about $179 per week for a Ford Fiesta during October in Dublin Airport. Hertz was correct about Master Card. Most Irish car rental agencies do not accept EU bank card CDW or insurance policies. I always take out the insurance because I tend to travel over mountains and very narrow roads to visit family.</p>