The morning that we woke up in a yurt, on a peaceful lake in County Clare, I knew that our vacation in Ireland was just the thing the doctor ordered.
This long-planned trip, to align with China’s National Day holiday, fell right in the middle of one of the busiest times of our lives. From moving jobs to moving cities, this vacation to Europe had the potential to be among the least relaxing ever planned, with the to-do list a mile long and growing.
But somehow, at least for a few blissful days, we were able to really unplug and recharge and all the battery-related metaphors you can think of. I can recall a few times when we warily opened WeChat, to arrange meetings with estate agents and to finalize flights and time-frames, but when all of China is on vacation for the same week, the grind slows to a crawl, no matter how stressed you might be with the anticipatory pressures of life.
Plus, there’s nothing like waking up in a yurt, simultaneously baking from the electric blanket and freezing from the late autumn chill that causes all other problems to fizzle into the background.
Our Driving Tour of Ireland
We left Dublin after a weekend of playing with our friends, touring a fantastic family-owned Irish whisky distillery, shopping in the town center, and temporarily losing our friends’ dog. You know, all the normal hallmarks of a successful friend visit. To begin our Irish road trip, we kept Day 1 pretty chill – a short 2.5 hour drive across the country to Galway.
In Galway, we went straight to the city center for a delicious lunch of mussels and hearty fish chowder at Quay Street Kitchen, and wandered around the compact downtown for a couple hours. Our arrival coincided with an oyster festival, so the streets were lined with stalls selling fresh, local oysters for cheap.
On the hunt for a good dinner, and hoping to avoid any potential parking issues in downtown Galway, we stumbled upon Kai Cafe + Restaurant, a fantastic restaurant that is almost always fully booked but happened to have a last-minute cancellation. We grabbed the last seats and we knew immediately we had made a good choice.
The meal was one of the best of the entire trip, as we embraced more local seafood, eating crab tossed with pumpkin seeds and celeriac and crispy-skinned john dory with a dollop of aioli and roasted cauliflower. The interior was warm and rustic, the ideal respite from the cold, damp Galway evening.
Day two of our driving tour of Ireland started with one of Ireland’s most famous tourist attractions – the Cliffs of Moher. You may recognize them from, say, any travel website, blog or magazine published about Ireland ever in the history of the world. The impressive setting is amplified by the threat of imminent death from the lack of any form of fencing around the edge.
Our visit was in late September, at the very tail end of the tourist season, so we didn’t have to buy tickets in advance. We parked our car, walked the five minutes over to the visitor center, which we haphazardly walked around, before setting out for the real reason we were there: the cliffs.
The pictures don’t quite do it justice, but the landscape is one of those that makes you feel small in the face of Mother Nature, always a good reminder. What makes it less special is the hoards of tourists trying to capture the perfect selfie. But like many of the crowded tourist spots in the world, about 20 minutes away from the parking lots and bathrooms, the crowds trickled down and we found ourselves alone on the Cliffs of Moher, only a few feet from the sheer 400 foot drop to the rocky coast below.
Side Note: If you happen to visit in the summer, be aware that you can do a lot online to make your visit more enjoyable, pre-booking tickets, arriving near opening/closing times, etc. For all you UK travelers, the Cliffs of Moher reminded us a lot of the cliffs in East Sussex, in Seven Sisters County Park.
After a few hours walking the trail at the Cliffs of Moher, we stopped for a quite lovely deli lunch at Hugo’s Deli in Lahinch before heading back inland towards our Airbnb accommodations for the night. Why did we head out of our way, to a town that barely appears on the map and required an extra hour of driving? Well, this is why.
How often do you get a chance to stay in a yurt, in Ireland, mere feet from a pristine, calm lake? It was our little slice of Irish countryside heaven, at least for the night. We settled into our AirBnb yurt, fired up the pizza oven for some makeshift flatbreads, and sat around the fire pit, quizzing each other on the extraordinarily difficult UK-version of Trivial Pursuit Genus Edition while enjoying a glass (er, bottle?) of wine. We made a bet that if either of us could answer all of the questions on one card, we would give the other $1,000. The most either of us answered correctly? One.
Never stayed in an Airbnb? Check our our Airbnb tips for first timers!
The chill of autumn was certainly in full effect, but thankfully the yurt had hot water bottles (wrapped in adorable decorative roll-neck sweaters) and an electric blanket. We awoke in the warmth of a thick comforter and heated blanket, but as soon as we attempted to leave the bed, the early morning chill overpowered our thin skin. We hastily packed up our belongings and retreated for the warmth of the car with the heat on full blast for our next destination on our driving tour of Ireland.
We spent the day meandering down to Killarney, in County Kerry, about 90 minutes south of our yurt experience. Killarney is a large town, and the jumping off point for many people driving the Ring of Kerry. It’s also a very popular area for many luxury tour buses, and frankly, we could think of many more enjoyable ways to spend a day than following tour buses around country roads.
After a pub lunch of heavy, savory shepherd’s pie we fancied a bite of something sweet, so we stopped into Murphy’s Ice Cream, a store that started in Dingle and now has a handful of shops around the Emerald Isle. We sampled some funkier flavors, like Dingle gin and Dingle sea salt while chatting with the friendly shopkeeper.
We asked for some local recommendations, especially around Killarney National Park, a place we wanted to explore and do at least a hike or two. She mentioned that the best view in all of Killarney is from the Aghadoe Heights, a luxury hotel nestled on the hills above the town. We both smiled, because we knew we had made yet another good choice.
Aghadoe Heights is where we were staying for the night in Killarney, and below, is the view she told us about.
We checked in, dropped off our stuff, and set about planning our time in Killarney. We booked a spa treatment for the two of us later in the day, which would be our treat after doing some walking through Killarney National Park.
There are wide variety of short, easy walks, as well as more arduous hikes up the steep hills around the park. We opted for a leisurely stroll along the lake around Muckross House, and it was perfect. There were few people on the paths, and the views around the lake and surrounding hills were amazing. We had assumed that Muckross House would be a rustic old home of some sort of significance. We were wrong. As we emerged from the woods on our walking path, we were met by an imposing stone estate, with acres of perfectly manicured lawn and gardens.
We had initial positioned ourselves in Killarney so that we could drive the Ring of Kerry, the scenic road that runs along the coastline of the peninsula. As previously mentioned, it is quite a busy road, and it would take most of the day, behind all the luxury buses, hardly our idea of a fun day.
So, at the last minute, we decided to backtrack and drive part of the Ring of Dingle, which would require less driving. Some say it’s actually more picturesque and it’s certainly less popular, a win in our book.
Yes, we traveled all the way to Ireland from China, and made it to the door step of the Ring of Kerry, and do not see a single mile of it. Do we regret it? Absolutely not. The Ring of Dingle was beautiful. The roads were not busy at all and the scenery just kept getting better and better as we cruised along the coast around the town of Dingle. We drove up the hills to Conor Pass, the highest road in Ireland, which affords you views of both sides of the Dingle peninsula as you dodge rogue sheep that enter the winding path.
Unfortunately for you, dear readers, we don’t have any shockingly beautiful images of Conor Pass. Why, you ask? Our perfect view, which we got to enjoy for about two minutes, was lost thanks to a thick cloud of fog that enveloped us. In the time it took me to walk from the viewing point back to the car, the view was lost. If you want to see some actual images, take a look at the official visitors guide to the Dingle Peninsula.
We wrapped up our day of driving on the Dingle Peninsula and made our way a few hours south to Kinsale.
Kinsale was the surprise highlight of our Irish road trip. It’s a little out of the way, tucked down into County Cork. The drive there involved some of the most narrow roads we encountered in Ireland, and despite the GPS saying we were only a few miles away, it seemed like we were in the middle of nowhere. Finally, we descended down into the Kinsale harbour.
It was our favorite town of the trip and one that we would return to in a heartbeat. It was tiny and quaint, but with numerous good restaurants and cafes dotting the colorful downtown that looked like a postcard. It was set right on the water, with a busy marina.
We spent the evening and the next day just walking around, enjoying the people watching along the narrow corridors, despite the chill in the air. We enjoyed a warming pot of tea and the perfect cream scones for breakfast at the Lemon Leaf Cafe. We bypassed the chance at a fancy meal for some home cooking at our Airbnb, buying some ingredients and a bottle of wine from the local shops and relaxing at home.
Our last full day of driving was mostly with the purpose of getting as close to Dublin as possible, for the next day’s flight back to Hong Kong. Without much research, we just settled on a cute Airbnb near Brittas Bay, about an hour south of Dublin. We met our lovely host, who had designed a lodge in her backyard for Airbnb and it was warm and small and totally cozy. Oddly enough, our host had just been in Shenzhen the previous month. She loved traveling around China, and we swapped travel stories, as we do.
It was fitting to end our road trip in Ireland near the sea. In Ireland, the sea is always somewhat near, and it dictates so much of Irish life. It’s almost always chilly, but so beautiful you just can’t resist it.
Ireland Road Trip Logistics
Here are some tips about driving around this amazing country.
— Rental Cars Can be Cheap: We got an amazing rate with Hertz for our trip. We paid $66US for a 7 day rental. That is not the daily rate, but the TOTAL. However, there is a catch to these deals.
— Car Insurance: The low rate you may find on a travel website can easily skyrocket with the addition of car insurance (which is added at the car rental desk). Normally, most US credit card holders have basic car rental insurance included as a benefit. However, many credit cards do not offer coverage in Ireland, thanks to the sheer number of scratches, dents, and broken side mirrors that occur when people are set loose on the narrow roads and left-side driving. We use the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card for our travels and it offers coverage in Ireland. They emailed me a letter as proof of insurance just in case it was an issue at the car rental agency in Dublin. So in the end, we only paid $66 for seven days of car rental.
— Get a Local Sim Card: I bought a sim card from 3 Mobile while we were in London (just as easy to obtain in Dublin) that does not charge any extra for data roaming in Ireland. That allowed us to navigate using Google Maps for our entire trip. You could add-on a GPS for your rental car, but they often charge more per day for GPS than the daily rate for the vehicle. My £20 sim card was all that we needed for our week on the road.
— The Roads Are Narrow: This is one of the biggest issues for people looking to road trip around Ireland. I wish I could say that it is not a big deal, but frankly, it is. While we used the motorway to navigate to and from Dublin, there are almost no motorways along the entire west coast. No matter what, you will be on country roads for most of the time, which means significantly narrower roads than back in the US, not to mention dealing with driving on the opposite side. If it makes you nervous just reading about it, then you might want to reconsider driving. Nothing sounds relaxing about a vacation with multiple hours per day white-knuckling a steering wheel in a foreign land. Of course, our UK friends will feel right at home!
Have any questions about a road trip around Ireland? Feel free to comment or reach out to us on our ‘contact us’ page! We love helping people with travel questions.
