Ireland 7 Day Itinerary: Dublin, Killarney and the West Coast

About 1h30, from 26 euros for the Book of Kells Experience, booked ahead because slots sell out. It is 40 minutes by bus from the airport, and Trinity opens the trip because it sits five minutes from most city centre hotels.

Before you pay, know what changed. The Old Library is under a conservation project and most of the 200,000 books in the Long Room have been taken off the shelves, one by one, into climate controlled storage. The room is still open and still impressive as architecture, but the shelves are empty, and they stay that way until the project ends, planned for 2030. The Book of Kells itself, the 9th century illuminated manuscript, is on display as normal.

If you only want the manuscript and the Long Room, without the digital exhibition in the Red Pavilion, there is a cheaper ticket from 19 euros. On the way out, cross Parliament Square, with the 1853 Campanile in the middle, and use the west gate to come straight out onto Grafton Street.

Quick stop, 30 minutes, free. This is the pedestrian street linking Trinity to St Stephen Green, and the walk is deliberately short: you can stroll down it hearing two or three street musicians who work the corners all day.

At number 78 is Bewley, a 1927 cafe with Harry Clarke stained glass upstairs, a good spot for the first tea of the trip while the jet lag is still heavy.

About 45 minutes, free entry, gates close at dusk. Nine hectares of lake, bridges and Victorian flower beds, open to the public since 1880 because Arthur Guinness, the grandson, paid for the works and handed the park to the city.

Look for the bullet marks on the arch at the northwest corner. They date from 1916, when rebels dug trenches in the lawn and agreed a ceasefire twice a day so the groundsman could feed the ducks. It is the best place to end the arrival day before dinner.

About 1h30, on the Liffey docks, 15 minutes on foot from Trinity. Start the day here because it is the easternmost point of the route, which from now on only moves west, never doubling back.

There are twenty interactive galleries in the vaulted cellars of the CHQ Building, an 1820 warehouse, covering the roughly 10 million people who left the island, from the Great Famine to missionaries, engineers and musicians. It is the honest counterweight to the green folklore of the souvenir shops, and it explains in an hour why there are far more people of Irish descent outside Ireland than Irish people inside it.

Quick stop, 30 minutes, free. From EPIC follow the Liffey quays west and come in through Merchant Arch. The cobbled lanes, the galleries and the red front of the pub that gave the area its name are worth the walk and the photo.

What is not worth it is the bill. A pint in the pubs on the central block goes well past 10 euros, close to double the normal Dublin price. Save the beer for the Victorian pubs at the end of this article. If it is a Saturday, the food market in Meeting House Square runs in the morning and is far more interesting than the bars.

About an hour, ticket at the door or online, ten minutes uphill from Temple Bar along Patrick Street.

The church has stood since 1220, over the well where St Patrick is said to have baptised converts in the 5th century. What sets it apart from any other cathedral is the tenant: Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver Travels, was dean here for 32 years and is buried in the nave beside Esther Johnson, under the Latin epitaph he wrote himself.

The park next door is free and sits on the ground of the old well. If money is tight, the Chester Beatty Library inside Dublin Castle, five minutes away, is free and holds one of the finest collections of eastern manuscripts in the world.

About two hours, from 24 euros online, 25 minutes on foot from the cathedral or ten by bus. Book a dated, timed slot: it is the most visited attraction in the country and the queue at the door is real.

The building is the old fermentation house, hollowed out into a seven storey atrium shaped like a pint glass that would hold the equivalent of 14.3 million pints. The climb ends at the glass walled Gravity Bar, with a 360 degree view over Dublin and the pint that comes with the ticket. The original lease Arthur Guinness signed in 1759, for 9,000 years, sits under a glass floor panel right at the entrance.

If you want to learn to pour your own pint, the Guinness Academy costs 14 euros extra and is the add on most people say was worth it. The Stoutie, which prints your selfie on the head, costs 10 euros and gets you one photo.

About 1h30 in total, including the one hour guided tour, which is the only way in. It is 20 minutes on foot from the Guinness, still heading west, and closes the day at the furthest point from the centre.

Booking is the problem, not the price. Tickets are released 28 days ahead at midnight Irish time and vanish within minutes. If you miss them there is one more chance: the site releases extra tickets and cancellations at 9.15am on the day itself. Buy only from the official site, because look alike pages exist and their tickets are refused at the door.

The prison ran from 1796 to 1924 and held everyone from children jailed for stealing food during the Great Famine to the leaders of the Easter Rising, executed in the Stonebreakers Yard in May 1916. The East Wing, with its cell galleries under an iron and glass roof, dates from 1864 and is where the guide usually tells the hardest part of the story.

About 1h30, 8 euros, 1h50 from Dublin on the M7 and M8. Pick the rental car up on the morning of this day and not before: for the first two days it would only be a parking bill.

This is the detour that replaces Blarney Castle, voted by travellers the most disappointing stop in the south of Ireland, where you pay 24 euros and queue up to two hours to kiss a stone. Cashel gives you far more for a third of the price: a 12th century round tower, a roofless Gothic cathedral, a high cross and Cormac Chapel, from 1134, the only building in Ireland that still holds Romanesque frescoes.

Two warnings that change the visit. The chapel can only be seen on a guided tour, and those tickets are sold on site only and in limited numbers, so ask the times the moment you arrive. And the rock is completely exposed to the wind: it closes without notice when the weather turns, which happens often.

About an hour, 5 euros, 20 minutes from Cashel on the M8 and already on the road to Killarney. It is one of the most complete castles in Ireland for an unheroic reason: it was rarely destroyed, because it tended to surrender first.

It sits on a rocky island in the river Suir, with an outer wall, three courtyards, a keep and defensive passages you can walk end to end. The cannonball embedded in the inner wall is from the 1599 siege, when the Earl of Essex needed three days to take the place.

If your trip falls on the first Wednesday of the month, entry is free, as at most Office of Public Works sites. The same rule covers Ross Castle and Clonmacnoise, both later in this itinerary.

Quick stop, 5 euros, a guided tour of about 20 minutes, 2 km from the castle. You can walk there along the riverside path in half an hour, or drive it in five minutes.

It is a cottage orne from around 1810, attributed to John Nash, the architect of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton: a deliberately undulating thatched roof, a veranda of rough tree trunks and no two windows alike, all designed to look like a peasant house that happened by accident. From here it is another two hours to Killarney.

About an hour, 5 euros on the guided tour, 3 km from the centre of Killarney. Start here because it is the northernmost point of the day: from the moment you leave, the N71 only runs south, with no stretch repeated.

The tower house is 15th century and held out until 1652, when it became the last stronghold in Munster to fall to Cromwell forces, who dismantled a warship and hauled it overland to besiege the castle from the water. Boats to Innisfallen Island, with its ruined monastery, leave from the jetty beside it, and the jaunting cars, the horse drawn traps, wait in the car park.

About two hours, 9 euros for the house alone or 18 euros on the joint ticket with the traditional farms. No booking needed, tickets are bought on arrival, and parking is free, as are the park and the gardens.

The 1843 mansion has 65 rooms and was refurbished in a hurry to host Queen Victoria in 1861, at a cost that helped ruin the family that built it. The rhododendron garden around it is what many people come for, and it costs nothing.

The traditional farms next door recreate three 1930s holdings with people working in them, and open daily in May and September and from 10am to 6pm from June to August. In April and October they open weekends only, and from November to February they close.

Quick stop, 30 minutes, free, 3 km south of Muckross on the N71. From the car park to the falls is five minutes on a flat, wide path.

It is about 20 metres of water dropping through moss and oak, and the volume depends on the previous day rain, which in Ireland is rarely a problem. If you want more, climb the steps behind the falls, known as Cardiac Hill, and in 15 minutes you reach a lookout over Lough Leane.

About 45 minutes with a stop at the cafe, free, 12 km south of Torc on the N71. The road climbs between mountains and the car park sits on the bend itself.

The name comes from 1861: Queen Victoria ladies in waiting stopped here on the way to Kenmare and said it was the best view of the whole journey. From the wall you see the three Lakes of Killarney lined up and the dark glacial valley behind them.

Six kilometres on is Moll Gap, another lookout on the same road, and that is where the full Ring of Kerry would carry on. With a spare day you can close the 179 km loop through Sneem and Waterville. This itinerary turns back to Killarney and heads north the next morning.

About two hours, a 2h45 drive from Killarney using the Killimer to Tarbert ferry, which runs hourly and cuts almost an hour off the route. Leave early, because here the arrival time changes both the price and the experience.

Entry is by timed slot booked online and costs 8 euros off peak or 12 euros between 11am and 4pm, which is exactly when the coach tours from Dublin and Galway arrive. Parking is included either way. Arrive at 10am or after 4pm and you pay less and walk the trail almost alone, and late in the day the sun hits the wall head on, because it faces west.

The cliffs run for 8 km and reach 214 metres at the highest point, with OBrien Tower from 1835, built as a viewing platform for tourists when that was still a novelty. Stay behind the wall: the edge is loose shale and it gives way without warning.

Quick stop, an hour for lunch, 8 km north of the cliffs. It is a village of colourful houses spread across three clusters, with a reputation as the capital of Irish traditional music.

Live sessions run almost every night from May to October, mainly at Gus OConnor and McGann. By day the reason to stop is the seafood soup with soda bread. Ferries to the Aran Islands leave from the pier, and they are left out of this itinerary because they need a full day.

About 1h30, 25 minutes north of Doolin, already inside the Burren. The ticket covers the fort and the interpretive centre, and the sheepdog demonstration runs several times a day, with fixed times on the board at the entrance.

The fort is a dry stone ring 42 metres across, lived in between the 10th and 17th centuries, and excavated without hurry since 2007: it is the only ring fort in Ireland with continuous archaeological work, and almost everything in the centre came out of the ground right there. The sheepdog demonstration is not a tourist turn, it is the working routine of the farm that surrounds the site.

Quick stop, 20 minutes, free, 1 km north of Caherconnell on the R480, with its own car park and a boardwalk to the monument.

It is the best known portal tomb in Ireland, raised around 3600 BC on the bare limestone pavement of the Burren. The 1980s excavation found the remains of more than twenty adults and children buried there over six centuries. From here it is 1h20 to Galway on the coast road.

About an hour by car with stops, free, 1h20 west of Galway on the N59. Do the furthest point first, because from here the rest of the day works its way back east.

The loop leaves Clifden, the capital of Connemara, and climbs the peninsula on two parallel roads, an upper and a lower. From the high lookout you see the whole of Clifden Bay, the islands of Inishturk and Turbot and open Atlantic with nothing between you and America. The road is narrow and two way: pull into the marked passing places, never onto the road itself.

Three hours for the full loop, free entry and free parking, visitor centre at Letterfrack, 30 minutes east of Clifden.

Diamond Hill is 442 metres, and the circuit that rounds the summit is 7 km, on boardwalk and stone steps for most of the way. From the top you get the Twelve Bens, the broken coastline of Ballynakill and, on a clear day, Inishbofin island. With less time, do the lower loop only, 3 km and an hour, which already gets you out into the bog.

Bring a waterproof jacket even if it is sunny at the bottom: rain here arrives in twenty minutes and clears just as fast.

About two hours, 18 euros, ten minutes from Letterfrack on the N59. Open daily from 10am to 6pm, last admission 5pm.

Mitchell Henry, a doctor from Manchester, built the castle in 1867 as a gift for his wife Margaret, who died of a fever in Egypt nine years later. He raised the mausoleum and the miniature neo Gothic church for her on the far side of the lake, and that church is the most beautiful part of the visit and the least photographed.

The ticket covers the ground floor of the abbey, the church, the mausoleum, the woodland trails and the Victorian walled garden, which is 1.5 km away with a free shuttle. The Benedictine nuns have been here since 1920, after fleeing Ypres in the First World War.

About 1h30 with the cruise, 20 minutes east of Kylemore. Boats leave from Nancy Point, near Leenane, the sailing lasts around 90 minutes and there are several departures a day in summer: check the times before you leave Kylemore.

Killary cuts 16 km inland and separates counties Galway and Mayo, with Mweelrea, the highest mountain in Connacht, on one side. Lonely Planet picked the fjord as one of the 50 entries in Best in Travel 2027, published in September 2026, and it is the first time it has appeared on a list like that.

The rows of buoys on the water are mussel farms, and mussels are what you eat in Leenane. It is 1h20 back to Galway on the N59, through the Inagh Valley between the Twelve Bens and the Maumturks, which in late afternoon is the finest stretch of the whole drive.

Quick stop, 45 minutes, free. Central Galway can be walked end to end in twenty minutes, and Quay Street is its spine: colourful pub fronts, bunting strung across the street and musicians playing from mid morning.

If there is time, look into the street market beside St Nicholas church, which runs on Saturdays and Sundays and is where Connemara producers sell cheese, oysters and bread.

Quick stop, 20 minutes, free, 200 metres past the end of Quay Street. Two arches from 1584, all that survives of the wall that protected the quay where wine and salt ships from Spain unloaded.

The grass around it is the city meeting point on any sunny day. Beside it is the Galway City Museum, free to enter, and across the river Corrib you can see the Claddagh, the old fishing village that gave the ring its name.

About 1h30, 8 euros, 1h20 east of Galway and another 1h20 on to Dublin airport. It is the detour that turns a dull stretch of motorway into the best stop of the day.

St Ciaran founded the monastery in 544 on a bend of the river Shannon, at the crossing of the river and the gravel road that ran across the bogs of the midlands, and it was that position that made Clonmacnoise the largest monastic city in Ireland. Two round towers, seven churches, the cathedral and hundreds of medieval grave slabs remain, scattered over the grass.

The three high crosses that appear in every old photograph of the place are now inside the visitor centre, protected from the weather, with replicas out in the field. It is worth seeing the originals up close, because the carved panels tell whole biblical scenes. Allow three hours of slack before your flight.