Why You Should Travel to Ireland – 50 Shades of Green, Blue & Beer

Travel to Ireland Using My Road-Map

After landing in Dublin, we immediately picked up our rental car from Hertz [Read: How to Master Driving in Ireland (As a Tourist)], drove right away to Co. Cork’s namesake capital, Cork, which would be our first pit-stop. Using this as a base, we then covered the largely unexplored region of south-western Cork.

A couple of days later we drove west into Ireland’s favourite lovechild – Co. Kerry. Some amongst Kerry’s long list of highlights include the three miraculously beautiful drives known as the Ring of Kerry, the Dingle Peninsula and the Iveragh Peninsula. It also boasts of Ireland’s most famous park – Killarney National Park and the charming towns of Dingle & Killarney. Our nights in Kerry were spent at a pretty little hamlet known as Glenbeigh – away from the tourist frenzied towns in the county. Glenbeigh is where I stumbled upon one of the best stories of my entire trip.

Moving northwards, we spent a day in Co. Clare, exploring the unbelievably stunning Cliffs of Moher that have made it to the front page of countless travel magazines, before seeking a home in Co. Galway and Ireland’s second most famous city – Galway.

Galway is the most ‘Irish’ of all Irish towns, with Gaelic being spoken in abundance on it’s charming bohemian streets. An unmissable destination just off Galway is the blessed cluster known as Aran Islands – floating in the innocuous Galway bay, boasting of countless tales of historic, cultural prominence.

Co. Galway also houses another world famous national park at Connemara – we spent a day in a tiny village right outside the park – Letterfrack and used it as base-camp for our ascent to the famous Diamond Hill, which overlooks the entire 2,957 hectares of the park.
Our final pit-stop on the Wild Atlantic route was the lovely surfing town of Bundoran, a great location to explore counties Sligo & Donegal. Bundoran hosts one of the best surfing spots in Europe (and the world) and is naturally frequented by experienced surfers from the world over. Drumcliff in Co. Sligo is where the legendary WB Yeats rests – may his soul rest in peace.

Co. Donegal is Ireland’s wild child with breathtaking coastal scenery all the way up to Malin Head (Ireland’s northernmost point) – unfortunately, cut short for time, we couldn’t complete the route right up to Malin’s and had to end our Atlantic journey after scaling the Pilgrim’s Path (on foot mind you), to Sliab Liag (Slieve League) – Ireland’s tallest cliffs and competing neck to neck on the beauty quotient with the Cliffs in Moher, only not so tourist infested or famous due to their remote nature and rugged terrain/weather.

From Donegal we finally drove down to Dublin, where we gave up our beloved ride and explored the erstwhile pre-medieval Viking stronghold on foot. Dublin is a supremely cosmopolitan city, filled with tourists of all kinds in the summer and is the only ‘party-esque’ destination in Ireland in the contemporary sense. If you ask me though, all of the Irish know exactly how to party, and I for one, would love to spend longer raging with locals in the smaller towns and hamlets than embark upon pub crawls in Dublin with my bunk-mates.

Also, since the title mentions it, I might as well speak of it now – except for the creamy delight of Guinness, all of Ireland’s sexret* (not a typo) beers, ales and lagers are produced in the little towns. All counties, and often each town within the same county have their own local brews, several of whom don’t even have names, but are delicious beyond measure. If there’s anybody in this world who know how to brew their beer (and drink it) it’s the Irish. Yes, yes I can hear the German’s grumble, but I’m yet to travel to Germany, and I reserve judgement till then, but hear me when I say this, you have some bloody darn high standards to beat ye feckin’ gobshites!

So that’s it then – a small outline of my time spent in this ridiculously wonderful nation. I look forward to sharing detailed travelogues of my time in each of these places, though certainly not as much as the one’s reading this I hope. I sign off momentarily, with some of the amazing pictures I clicked along the way.

Also Read:

7 Travel Lessons From My First Excursion

Ireland: Co. Cork, The Underated Prologue

Playing The Guide in Goa

 Interesting Reads On the Web:

If you can’t wait for the rest of my series to be up, here’s a short summary of my trip on Tripoto – [Read: The Wild-Atlantic Irish Road-Trip]

The Best of Ireland | Passport Collective

Discovering Seville, Travel Photo Mondays