Travel Scams
in Ireland

Dublin is a city of 1.4 million that has changed enormously since the Celtic Tiger years and feels simultaneously younger, more international, more expensive, and more confident than the city of twenty years ago. Trinity College's Book of Kells (queue times up to 2 hours in summer; book online to avoid this -- the book itself, illuminated by Irish monks around 800 AD, is genuinely extraordinary even through glass) and the Long Room library above it (which is the room the Jedi Archives in Star Wars was modelled on, for whatever that's worth, and which is unmistakably one of the finest library rooms in the world) are the primary cultural anchor. The National Museum of Ireland on Kildare Street is free and has the Bog Bodies, Viking artefacts, and the Tara Brooch all in one building. Georgian Dublin around Merrion Square and Fitzwilliam Square is the most coherent example of 18th-century urban planning in the British Isles outside Bath, and it's entirely free to walk through. Howth Head, 20 minutes by DART from Connolly Station, has cliff walks and a fishing harbour with seafood restaurants that serve considerably better fish than anything in Temple Bar.

• Book Trinity College's Book of Kells online in advance -- skip-the-queue is worth the small premium in summer
• Mulligan's on Poolbeg Street pours the best Guinness in Dublin by common consensus of people who've spent time studying the question
• The DART coastal train from Connolly to Howth (€4 each way) is the best-value scenic journey in Ireland
• Stoneybatter, Rathmines, and Ranelagh are the neighbourhoods where Dublin people actually eat and drink -- better food, lower prices, no tourist menus

The Wild Atlantic Way is a 2,500km coastal route from Donegal in the northwest to Cork in the south, and it is the Ireland that the postcard photographs are trying to represent -- cliffs, stone walls, Connemara bogs, the Aran Islands, the Burren's limestone pavement with wildflowers growing from the cracks in May. The Cliffs of Moher (214 metres above the Atlantic at their highest point, genuinely among the most dramatic coastal landscapes in Europe) require arriving early to avoid the tour bus surge between 11am and 3pm. The Aran Islands -- Inis Mór, Inis Meáin, Inis Oírr -- are reached by ferry from Ros a'Mhíl or Doolin or by small plane from Connemara Airport and reward at least one night's stay. Dún Aonghasa on the clifftop of Inis Mór, a Bronze Age stone fort with its back wall missing because the cliff fell away 300 metres to the sea, is the most specific place in Ireland.

• Cliffs of Moher: arrive before 10am or after 4pm in summer, bring a waterproof jacket, and walk south along the cliff path toward Hag's Head for the views that the visitor centre car park doesn't give you
• Doolin has the most natural traditional music sessions in Clare -- the pubs (McGann's, McDermott's, Gus O'Connor's) have sessions most nights in summer and the musicians are genuinely playing, not performing
• Inis Mór is best explored by rented bicycle (€10-15 per day from the harbour) -- the island's roads are narrow enough that a car feels wrong and bikes are how islanders actually travel
• Connemara between Clifden and Westport requires a full day to drive properly -- don't rush the bog road section above Kylemore Abbey

Cork is Ireland's second city and considers itself its first in everything that matters -- an opinion held with the affectionate exasperation of a city that has been second-billing to Dublin for centuries and knows it's better at food. The English Market on Grand Parade, a covered Victorian market in continuous operation since 1788, is the best single food market in Ireland: tripe and drisheen (a blood sausage specific to Cork), fresh fish from that morning's catch, farmhouse cheeses, local charcuterie, and a balcony café where Queen Elizabeth II had lunch in 2011 during her historic state visit and the Cork commentary on the occasion was characteristically dry. Kinsale, 25km south, is a beautifully preserved port town that has become Ireland's food capital -- restaurants on every street, a food festival in October, and Good Things Café on Main Street serving Kerry lamb and Castletownbere crab at prices that remind you this is not Dublin.

• The English Market is free to walk around and is best between 9am and noon when it's fully stocked -- the balcony café serves one of the better lunches in Cork city at reasonable prices
• Cork's pub culture (the Long Valley on Winthrop Street, the Franciscan Well Brewery on North Mall) is less tourist-facing than Dublin and correspondingly more genuine
• Blarney Castle draws enormous tourist volumes for the Blarney Stone -- if you're going, the castle and grounds are worth seeing regardless, but the Stone itself involves lying on your back over a parapet while a castle employee holds your legs and thousands of people photograph you, which is an experience you can assess for yourself
• The Beara Peninsula southwest of Kenmare has better scenery than the Ring of Kerry with a fraction of the touring coaches

Galway is the city that Ireland uses as shorthand for everything it thinks is best about itself -- traditional music, the Irish language, the Atlantic coast, an irreverent intellectual culture, and a pub scene that produces more accidental conversations with strangers than anywhere else in the country. The pedestrianised Latin Quarter and Shop Street area have buskers, market stalls, and a concentration of pubs with sessions most evenings. Salthill promenade on the bay west of the city is where Galwegians walk, swim in the Atlantic regardless of temperature, and kick the wall (a local tradition involving kicking a specific stone wall at the end of the promenade -- the origin is unclear and the practitioners are serious about it). The Galway Oyster Festival in September is one of the best food festivals in Europe: three days of oysters from the Galway Bay beds, stout, and music that the county genuinely delivers rather than performs.

• Galway's best sessions are at Tigh Coili on Mainguard Street and Monroe's Tavern on Dominick Street -- both have music most nights and both pull a genuine mix of locals and visitors
• The Saturday morning Galway Market in Eyre Square has the best street food in Connacht -- crepes, Asian food, artisan cheese, fresh fish from the Atlantic coast vendors
• The bus from Galway to Clifden (Bus 923, daily) covers the Connemara landscape without a car -- a good option for a day trip if you're based in Galway city
• Galway accommodation in July and August is expensive and books out fast -- the Galway Arts Festival (third week of July) and Galway Races (late July) cause complete saturation

Kerry has the Ring of Kerry (a 179km coastal drive that is genuinely beautiful and traversed by enough touring coaches in summer to make individual travel feel like a procession), the Dingle Peninsula (more compact, less touristed, and arguably better -- Slea Head Drive at the tip has views of the Blasket Islands and the most Atlantic sky you'll see this side of the Faroes), and Killarney National Park (the lakes below the MacGillycuddy's Reeks mountains, jaunting car rides on the Gap of Dunloe track, and a Victorian mountain landscape that is objectively extraordinary). Kenmare is the right base for the southwest -- better restaurants than Killarney town, less coach traffic, proper market on Wednesdays and Fridays.

• Drive the Ring of Kerry anticlockwise (the direction coaches go is clockwise) to avoid being behind convoy traffic on the narrow sections
• Dingle Peninsula's Slea Head Drive is the better alternative to the Ring of Kerry -- drive it from Dingle town westward in the morning before tour groups arrive
• Killarney's jaunting cars (horse-drawn traps) charge fixed government rates -- agree the price per person before getting in and confirm what the tour covers
• Kenmare's farmers market on Wednesdays is the best place to buy Kerry farmhouse cheese, including the extraordinary Milleens washed-rind that has been produced on the Beara Peninsula since the 1970s

Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom (using pound sterling rather than euros), separated from the Republic by an open border with no customs checks since the Good Friday Agreement. Belfast has transformed since the Troubles -- the Titanic Belfast museum on Queen's Island (built on the actual slipway where the ship was constructed, and one of the finest maritime museums in Europe) is the anchor, but the Cathedral Quarter's pub culture, the Botanic Gardens, and the mural trails in West Belfast give the city genuine depth. The Giant's Causeway (40,000 interlocking basalt columns formed by a volcanic eruption 60 million years ago, the product of geological process so geometrically regular it looked supernatural to every culture that saw it) is 90 minutes north of Belfast on the Antrim coast. Drive the Antrim Coast Road back to Belfast via the Dark Hedges (the beech trees planted in the 1700s that became a Game of Thrones location) and Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge.

• Currency switches at the border -- pound sterling in Northern Ireland, euros in the Republic. Most shops near the border accept both but the exchange rate varies
• Titanic Belfast requires at least 2.5 hours to do properly; book tickets online to skip the queue in summer
• The Giant's Causeway has a National Trust visitor centre with a car park fee (£13) -- you can park in the town of Bushmills (2km walk) for free if the fee is a concern
• Belfast's Cathedral Quarter pub culture (The Duke of York, The Crown Liquor Saloon on Great Victoria Street, The Dirty Onion) is significantly less tourist-pricing than Dublin's Temple Bar equivalent