Planning a trip to the Republic of Ireland with your family? Let our experiences traveling with two tween-agers help you see the country, meet locals, connect with history, and keep to a modest budget! For step-by-step guidelines on planning your trip, start with the Introduction.
To Drive or Not to Drive?
With the glaring exception of Dublin, you really do need a car to travel in the Republic of Ireland. There just isn't an extensive-enough train or bus system for cross-country travel. I was intimidated to rent a car internationally and then drive it on the "wrong" side of the road, but it's totally doable. Here's what my family learned from our experience being in the Republic.
Dublin: Yay for Public Transit!
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| Double-decker buses have the best views! |
Dublin is a nightmare to drive, but is simple and economical to get around with buses, trams, and some good ol' walking. The buses even have their own lanes, so you're not spending time gridlocked at intersections. And you can buy a family visiting card, so there's no need to fumble for coins when you get on the vehicle...simply scan your bus card and your whole family gets on. It's cheaper this way, too.
When you first arrive at the Dublin Airport, stop by the bus information desk just past the arrivals gates. They can help you figure out the best kind of option for your time in Dublin. I scoured the Leap Card website ahead of time to decide which plan we needed, but there was an even better option I learned about at the desk.
This desk can get busy, but it's totally worth it to stick out the line. Have your spouse take the kids to the bathroom and feed them the last of the snacks while you get the transit passes. Make sure your passes include the AirLink bus that takes you into the city.
Then, download the National Journey Planner app to your smart phone. You can enter one or more destinations and it will map out exactly how to get there from your location using public transit.
Car Rental
Thankfully, there are a lot of websites to help figure out the ins-and-outs of renting a car in Ireland. It's very important to read the fine print and know what kinds of insurance coverage, navigation systems, and other extras you do or don't want; a Google search on renting a car in Ireland will give you some good information. Some important things to consider:
- It's usually cheapest and most convenient to pick-up/drop-off at the Dublin airport and then take public transit if you're going into the city.
- GET THE SMALLEST CAR you can be comfortable in. Seriously. Many of the roads are n-a-r-r-o-w, mostly with no shoulders, and flanked by stone walls, shrubbery, or both. We opted for a small sedan (one category up from compact), and it was just right for the four of us. (Packing light helps enormously.)
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| Ack! Where did he come from? |
- We paid a little more to get an automatic transmission. That's what I'm used to driving at home, and what with simultaneously answering questions from the kids, gawking out my peripheral vision at the scenery, getting directions from Jay, and saving my side-view mirror from oncoming tractors, I'm so glad I wasn't managing a clutch.
- We saved money by choosing just one of us to drive. Costs go up to have more than one driver listed and insured, so Jay got to be navigator.
- Your child might need a booster seat, even if they don't at home. My eight-year old did. Legally, the child must be 5-feet tall or 79 pounds to ride without one. You can rent one from the car company for around 10 Euros a day...or you can bring one from home for free on the airplane. We had a spare sitting around, so we packed it in a duffle, checking it for free on the way there. At the end of the trip, we left the booster in Ireland and packed all our dirty laundry in the duffle, having paid ahead of time to check it. More room for souvenirs!
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| Navigator is also photographer. |
- We also saved money by not renting a navigation device because we were able to do mapping with our phones.
(Turns out, the iPhone had data everywhere; the Samsung didn't have any data in western Ireland, but it had the Google capability of downloading routes on WiFi and then following them off-line.)
Sometimes this happens. "Rerouting..."
Driving Times
A glance at Google maps makes driving the width of Ireland look like an easy three or four hours. But that's not how it works when you're driving in Ireland...especially if you have antsy kids in the car. Most routes involve roads that are often narrow (think one-lane roads with two-way traffic), curvy, and hilly. There may be tractors, cyclists, buses, haying machines, or cows around the next bend, so the posted speed limit may be faster than you're comfortable with. This makes for a very exciting drive, but not a speedy one!
There are also so many wonderful things to see en-route to pretty much anywhere, that with a family it really makes sense to incorporate stops along the way.
For a detailed example, here's how we did the drive from Kilkenny to our stay on the Dingle Peninsula (Google maps says 3 hours, 45 minutes):
9:15 a.m.--Left Kilkenny
10:30 a.m.--Arrived Rock of Cashel and stayed for visit
12 p.m.--Left Rock of Cashel; ate sandwiches in the car
1:00 p.m.--Arrived Mitchelstown; stopped to find bathrooms and hunt down a detailed Ireland road map, since Jay's phone wasn't picking up data
1:45 p.m.--Left Mitchelstown; ate snacks in car
3:45 p.m.--Arrived Muckross Farms and stayed for visit
5:45 p.m.--Left Muckross and ate last of the snacks in car
6:30 p.m.--Stopped in small town with one pub; ducked through rain to find out if pub served dinner (it didn't); got back in car and worked at preventing starving family from resorting to cannibalism
6:45 p.m.--Stopped in next small town and found a pub serving dinner; ate one of the most delicious meals of my life
7:30 p.m.--Left pub warm, fed, and less cranky
8:00 p.m.--Stopped on side of the road for two minutes to photograph Atlantic ocean in the rain
Total time in car from Kilkenny to Dingle Peninsula:
6 hours, 15 minutes. Adding two significant stops, three minor stops, and dinner: 11 hours, 30 minutes. And folks, we were exhausted. We were grateful to be staying on the peninsula for a couple days!
The point of all this? Traveling through Ireland takes longer than you think. Plan for it, don't fight it! If you can't see everything on this trip that you want to, say, "Next time!" and end your visit to Ireland having kids who want to do it again.
Tips for Car Time with Kids
We tried to be strategic in planning a road trip that wouldn't end with the four of us killing each other--or worse. Everyone's family dynamics are different, but these are some ideas that might be helpful:
Assemble "travel binders" before the trip with pencils, pens, and paper activities. My kids used blank paper for creating their own comic strips and Plants vs. Zombies characters (the scavenger hunts and bingo activities I'd printed didn't end up interesting them).
Decide ahead of time about setting limits on electronic device usage. Our policy for the kids was, "No electronics in the car," because we wanted to encourage conversation and awareness of the countryside we were traveling through. This policy did mean that we had to break up the driving more, however.
Build in planned stops that break up the drive. See the Sights and Sites post for some ideas.
Always have water bottles and betweeen-meal snacks. The kids appreciate this, too.
Leave time for spontaneous stops. When we happened upon a lake during a long driving stretch, we got out and the kids swam!
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| We found out later this was called Lough Bunny. Photo taken before the swim trunks went on. |
Allow the kids to take photographs. They may be blurry, but who cares?
Keep full meals eaten in the car to a minimum. Stopping for meals takes time, but it's more opportunity to experience local life and it gets everyone out of the vehicle.
What are your strategies for car travel with kids? Share in the comments!
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