In 2015, I landed in Dublin! Yay! With a friend, we were en route to Galway to visit another friend who was doing a sort of internship there. Roughly, we spent a week in Ireland: from Dublin to Galway and back, we also went to some exotic places such as the Cliffs of Moher or Connemara.
In this article, I'll walk you through the most iconic places I've been to so that you get the most out of YOUR trip.
Dublin
- You definitely don't want to miss the Temple Bar district and its iconic pub The Oliver St John Gogarty
- The Barnacles Hostel Dublin on Temple Ln Street is one of the cheapeast you can find in the area, although we did not get to sleep there for it was fully booked
- Trinity College campus is fun for hanging out during the Summer days
- Stephen's Green Shopping Centre
- Shopping streets: Grafton street and Henry streets
- Also don't forget to check out the churches and cathedrals
Galway
A beautiful small city on the West coast!
- We stayed at the Celtic Tourist Hostel. Highly recommended for their very affordable prices.
- William St and Shop St
- Naming all the pubs I went into would take ages, my recommendation is to check them all in those two above-mentionned streets
- The Galway Cathedral
- I also highly suggest you simply wander in the streets, near the Eglinton canal
- The Long Walk and the Galway City Museum
- The shore and the causeway to Mutton Island
I am also pretty sure we spent a night at the Barnacles hostel (it's a chain, there's another one in Dublin as I wrote above).
Other places I've been to
- Connemara: do a bus tour!
- Kylemore Abbey & Victorian Walled Garden (in Connemara)
- Aillwee Cave: after the visit, do climb up the hill, it's fun
- Cliffs of Moher
- The Burren
As far as I remember, we took a 2-day bus tour that took us to both Connemara (we stopped for a couple of hours at Kylemore Abbey) and Cliffs of Moher (+ the Burren and Aillwee Cave). It's definitely worth your money!
Other places to go I wish I visited
- Cork
- Apparently the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin is great
- Aran Islands