The Leonard Home

For the last year we’ve been planning an epic Europe trip, and we have now been back home for just under a month. Matt and I hadn’t taken a big trip together since our honeymoon, so we were ready to go all out after three years of marriage. When it was announced that our Alma Mater, Georgia Tech, would be kicking off their football season in Dublin, we knew it was the excuse we had been looking for to make our way to Europe.

I’ll be breaking up our trip recap into 4 parts, starting with this post recapping our 4 day road trip around Ireland. It will be followed by posts for our 3 days in Dublin, 4 days in London, and 3 days in Paris. So be sure to stay tuned while I detail these amazing 2 weeks!

One thing to know regarding the way we vacation is that we don’t fit in much time for rest and relaxation. I spent a lot on those flight tickets and I don’t want to miss seeing a single thing! If you like to travel the same way, this post is for you!

We flew into Dublin from Atlanta on an overnight flight, landing at 9 AM. We chose to immediately pick up our car and head out for a full day of activities. If you are the type that can’t sleep on flights this might not work for you, but it was just fine for us!

After picking up our car we headed to Glendalough. I was enamored with the pictures I had seen of this beautiful lake in a picturesque valley. There are so many hikes here for different skill levels, so pick a hike that’s best suited for you and enjoy! Since we were jet lagged, we kept things easy and went along the pretty flat Green Route, which took us on a beautiful route along the lake pictured above.

My research on this day was mostly related to the lakes, and while I had heard something about a “Monastic City” I assumed it was nearby and not actually in the park. I was pleasantly surprised when we saw the ruins on our walking path, so we happily took a detour to explore. It was neat to explore the ruins of this village where monks had lived and worshipped, surrounded by graves old and new. I would highly recommend making a visit.

After this we headed to the medieval town of Kilkenny. The drive was so beautiful as we drove from the valley into the hills, and to our hotel.

The B&B we stayed at, The Butler House, was our favorite of the whole trip. It was the dower house for the mother of the earl who lived in Kilkenny Castle which was such a cool bit of history. We loved the accommodations, the gardens, the friendly staff, and the view of the castle.

After dropping off our luggage, we started to explore the city. Due to the Kilkenny Arts Festival happening at the same time, we unfortunately weren’t able to tour inside the castle, but we did enjoy walking around the exterior and getting pictures. The less time you spend in Glendalough, the more time you have in Kilkenny, so I would highly recommend taking a shorter trail if you are interested in being able to tour the interior of the castle.

This was plenty of activity for us for our first day! We found a pub in town (there were so many options with great reviews!) to enjoy our first fish and chips of the trip, then made our way to bed to get some rest for an early morning the next day.

We enjoyed a wonderful breakfast at the B&B (the best of the whole trip!) and then headed off to Killarney. At 3 hours, this was the longest drive of the whole trip. We arrived around 11:30 AM and headed straight to pick up our rental bikes.

Killarney National Park is a beautiful park that you can drive to if you wish, but is best explored on bike. We rented from Killarney Bike Rentals which was great as it was the closest bike rental option to the park. I’m not a strong biker so I appreciated cutting down the total distance. It was very easy to book online only hours in advance.

Our first bike stop was Muckross Abbey. This was the biggest reason we chose to visit Killarney National Park- I had been utterly enchanted by the pictures I had seen of the ancient yew tree growing through the ruins of the inner courtyard and knew I had to see it myself. Because this area of the park is only accessible by bike or walking and there is no nearby parking lot, there were surprisingly very few people here. I expected it to be extremely crowded as it is truly so spectacular but we felt like we were able to really enjoy it and never had to worry about cropping other people out of our pictures.

After we had gotten our fill of the abbey, we continued our journey on the bike path along the lake towards Muckross House. You can choose to explore the grounds and gardens for no cost, but we chose to pay to tour inside the manor and the farms. We spent about 25 minutes inside the manor and about an hour at the farms. If you choose to just tour the grounds you may have more time to fit other activities into your day.

The farms was one of our favorite parts of the day. It was fun to walk through the hills touring old Irish farm houses and visiting with the animals. We loved the sweet wolfhounds the most. I think this would be a great item to add to your itinerary if you were traveling with children.

After we finished the tour of the farms, we headed back to return our bikes. After banging up my knee due to a minor bike crash (entirely my fault), I wasn’t up for a hike, but we had originally planned to visit Torc Falls after returning our bikes. Instead we made our way to the pharmacy for some bandaids, then to our B&B, Killarney Lodge.

We had a very hard time finding dinner in Killarney town so this is the one place I would highly encourage making a dinner reservation. We ended up waiting a long time for a sports bar as everywhere else was full of reservations. We loved this underground cocktail bar after we finished dinner as it had a really fun speakeasy vibe and amazing drink specials.

If we had more time in Ireland, this is where I would extend our trip. We missed taking a boat tour to Ross Castle which I absolutely would do if we had more time. I also thought Killarney town had a good number of restaurants and seemed like a good place to have as a home base for more than a night.

We woke up bright and early to pack up and then enjoy breakfast as soon as they started serving. It was another award winning breakfast that firmly cemented my love of the Full Irish Breakfast.

When we had eaten our fill, we made our way to Dingle to begin the Slea Head Drive. This beautiful drive along the Slea Head Peninsula was everything I expected from Ireland- the rolling green hills, the stunningly blue water, the sharp cliffs. This drive is nice because you can stop at as many or as few roadside stops as you would like to make this tailored to you. We made these stops:

1. Beehive Huts: There are several places you can stop to see these. We stopped at the second one we came across.
2. Hold a Baby Lamb: we loved visiting with the baby sheep and paid extra to watch a sheep dog demonstration. You can call ahead and book the demonstration- we got lucky in that one was already scheduled shortly after we arrived and we just added ourselves to that group
3. Dunquin Pier- you’ll recognize this location from the iconic picture of the sheep being led up the cliff you’ll see all over Ireland. All of the signs pointing towards it were only in Irish, Cé Dhún Chaoin, so even though it was on our list of must-see’s we almost missed it.
4. The Blasket Centre- we chose not to actually go inside here, but stopped at the overlook and walked along the trails they had down to watch the water crashing over the rocks

After we finished the loop, we headed into Dingle Town. Dingle was so charming, beautifully colored buildings line the streets, full of pubs and shops! We had a late lunch here and walked around doing some shopping. If you are looking for a traditional Irish souvenir like a claddagh ring or fine wool goods, this is the perfect place to shop.

As the day ended we headed out of Dingle to stay at a halfway point, Adare, so that we would have a shorter distance to the Cliffs of Moher the next morning. The drive to Adare was the scariest test of our driving skills- this was the first time we were on a road that you had to fully stop and take turns as the narrow road was on the side of a cliff.

We didn’t explore Adare, it was just a stopping point for the night. It didn’t have much to do and had very few restaurants that were open for dinner, so I don’t know that I could recommend it. If I was planning this trip again I think we would have spent the night in Dingle and just taken a longer drive the next morning.

Once we had checked into our hotel for the evening, the Dunraven Arms Hotel, we grabbed a tasty dinner at a pub, then headed to bed.

After breakfast at the hotel we headed off to our next hotel to drop off our luggage. One of our friends who had been before recommended we buy picnic food and eat outside at the cliffs, so we grabbed some sandwich stuff and headed to meet some other friends at the Cliffs of Moher. With the gale force winds we encountered, I can’t recommend eating outside as was suggested to us- we found a spot on the floor of the crowded visitor center to catch up and make our sandwiches.

After we were fueled up, we headed out to explore the cliffs. We enjoyed hiking along the edge of the cliffs, getting as far as we could before our friends had to catch their bus.

After a very full few days of travel we didn’t try to pack any more activity into the day. We headed back to our hotel in the late afternoon for a nap and didn’t emerge until we headed to a pub for dinner.

We chose to stay in Doolin, the closest town to the cliffs for the night but could have easily made our way back to Dublin that night instead. Hotels were limited and expensive near the cliffs, so we went ahead and splurged on Fiddle and Bow, where we enjoyed the comfiest bed of the trip.

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And that’s it- four magical days road tripping through Ireland!

So many resources went into planning this trip, but I used this guide from Cultured Voyages as a major starting point and frequent reference document, and would highly recommend checking it out.

This was truly the most incredible trip. The days we spent driving throughout Ireland were my absolute favorite part, but I’m excited to share the other incredible places we visited! Stay tuned for the rest of the trip!