IRELAND
Slow roads. Small towns. Big memories.
Ireland rewards travelers who leave room for it to surprise them.
Our two-week road trip took us from a farm treehouse near Kilkenny to the Ring of Kerry, three memorable nights in Dingle, the quieter cliffs at Kilkee, Galway, a medieval tower house near Nenagh and finally Trim.
But the route isn't really the reason we're still talking about the trip years later.
Some of our strongest memories came from things we could never have put on an itinerary: a bartender teaching us about Irish whiskey, a café owner pulling up a chair to join us for lunch, a B&B host going shopping for a cheese we'd fallen in love with, and a falconer who had nowhere else to be that afternoon.
Other parts didn't go nearly as smoothly. We lost a day before we even reached Ireland. Our luggage disappeared for a week. A highly recommended stop turned out not to fit our travel style at all.
And somehow, it remains one of our favorite trips.
This isn't our checklist for seeing Ireland. It's what we learned from planning it, driving it, getting things wrong and discovering what mattered to us along the way.
Two Weeks in Ireland: What Worked, What Didn’t & What We’d Do Again
A missed connection, seven days without luggage and an unrushed road trip taught us plenty about traveling Ireland. Here's what worked, what didn't and what we'd do again.