Karen,

Welcome to the forum! You could very well do without a car for those extra days, as there are some excellent day tours that take you North. For Newgrange, Tara and Bru na Boinne, check out Mary Gibbons tour, www.newgrangetours.com. You can catch a train out of Dublin for a day trip to the Antrim Coast. I would certainly look north, as it would appear that your tour will be making a southern loop. Train travel and day tours would lessen the hassle of car rental, and add a bit of adventure for your son.

What a wonderful present for both you and your son!

Slan Beo,

Bit Devine

Hello All:

I am hoping that there might be more veterans on here today for some more ideas. Should I base in Dublin and take the tours to Antrim, Meath, and hang in Dublin without car while waiting for our tour OR rent a car and venture out on our own???? We have 4 days before the tour starts on the 2nd of July. I'm worried about getting reservations for either of these possibilities.

Any input would be appreciated.
Thanks, Karen

Karen,

Given the time of year that you are traveling over, the Antrim tour would be a feasible tour, as there is daylight until close to 11 p.m. If that seems like too much, I would still suggest taking advantage of Mary Gibbon's NewGrange tour on one of your free days. You might also look at the Causey experience, in which they take you out for a day on an Irish farm. There are a great deal of day tours that you can take advantage of in Dublin. What is the itinerary for Dublin once you connect with the tour? That should tell you if you want to poke around Dublin for a day or venture farther afield. For someone your son's age, the Dublin school of Falconry might be a memorable experience, as well. I know that my son thoroughly enjoyed his time with the falcons and owls. You had mentioned Glendalough, there are some excellent day tours out of Dublin for there, as well. One of my favorites is through Over the Top Tours, which takes you through the wicklow mountains and into Glendalough. It is a very small tour with a maximum of 14 people.

Slan Beo,

Bit


-- Edited by CowboyCraic at 00:46, 2007-06-18

Thanks to both of you!

The CIE Tour "Irish Legends" does not offer much in the way of Dublin.
"At 2:00 pm a local tour guide will introduce you to Dublin's historic buildings, Georgian streets, parks and monumnets. Tour Dublin Castle to learn about Ireland's history and see pricless furnishings in the dignified State Apartments. Enjoy a welcome get-together drink with your fellow travelers and the balance of the evening is free". Doesn't sound like much in Dublin.

We probably want to see the Book of Kells, Guinness works, Kilmainham Gaol, Trinity College. I'm guessing that one day of sight seeing on the hop on/hop off bus will do. If you have opinions on what to see or if we would need more than a day, please let me know.

Is Trim Castle worth seeing? I had read about it on "tripadvisor.com" and it sounded beautiful. I was hoping to see it in the same day as Bru na boinne. Found this suggested driving tour around Co. Meath that looked interesting:
http://www.meath.ie/Tourism/Heritage/HeritageTrails/MeathHeritageTrail/
Has anyone taken this motortrip? Are the distances quite great to see it all in one day?

Feeling lost as to what to do here: am I better off renting a car and doing Meath and area south of Dublin; or taking tours from Dublin as Cowboy suggested? It seems the tours add up for two people, and perhaps the car rental will keep costs lower. Feedback appreciated.

Thanks again to you wonderful folks. Karen

Wish I had a month so it wouldn't matter so much. With such precious little time, this can be so nerve racking- I want to see it all.  We're so excited over here though.

Thanks, Karen

One thing I noticed while touring Ireland in a car - the roads beat you up and you have to concentrate to drive, being on the opposite side and all. Fifity miles there is like 300 here. Next time we go, we're going to try and stay in one place and just take little day tours. It's much more relaxing that way.

Hello All:

We just got back a day ago. Ireland is beautiful and there is SO much to see. The people are also wonderful and QUITE FUN.

I'll give you a quick re-cap as I learned some very important things on this trip that may also be important to some other travelers.

Our tip was 2 weeks. We had 5 nights on our own and the rest was on a CIE tour- The Legends.

We spent 1 day training/busing Dublin. Three days rental car. This time was clearly the highlight of our trip. We saw so much on our own and had the convenience of lingering when we found something quite interesting. In that time, we saw Newgrange and Dowth, Hill of Tara, Malahide Castle, Trim Castle, Howth (my son is a history buff), Glendoloug, and Powerscourt. In Dublin, we went to Guinness (gosh the beer is so much better there)l, Kilmainham Gaol, General Post Office (with bullets still in the columns), did the musical pub crawl at Gogarty's, (Brazen Head Pub- great beef and Guinness stew), Dublin Castle, and Trinity College/Book of Kells. Having the car outside of town was much like the Keystone Cops, but I do love an adventure.

The rest of our time was spent on the CIE Legends tour. This was horribly expensive and I found myself confined to a group of Americans that I wouldn't normally be interested in spending time with. The tour guid was also the bus driver. He didn't want to be talked to when in the cities, so much for info on the individual cities. Much focus was on stoppin for eating, which was often in uninteresting establishments outside of the city- which often made me wonder how the proprietor was related to the bus driver.

The tour hotel in Dublin was the Burlington. Although it was supposed to be deluxe, it had filthy furniture in the room with stuffin hanging out. In the end, I much prefer putting my money toward seeing the sites rather than so-so deluxe hotels and and too much eating. Although two nights were spent in Kilkenny, one hour was actually spent in town. Ditto for Galway, which really saddened me.

The CIE tour cost $3000 for two people for 8 days. It would have been much less and we would have seen much more if I had just used my Rick Steve's guide book with the generous assistance of the helpful folks on this forum.

As far as the Joe ****er/Al Green concert at Malahide Castle, I chose not to spent the $150 euros for tickets due to budget reasons. However we did go to Malahide Castle on the morning of the concern tto tour the castle. We ran into one of the security guards for the concert who told me to come back early from Newgrange/Trim Castle and he would give me tickets for free. THAT was incrediible. Funny culturally oddity though, Irish folks don't get up and dance/clap at concernts....and there I was over on the side dancing and whistling....they probably thought- "there's an American".

I wouldn't recommend in eating in restaurants there. They are pricey and noneventful. Pub grub and the markets are great ways to go and more fun too.

I was disappointed with CIE tours as it was impossible for the bus driver to also be the tour guide over so many days. He was not the friendliest preson and the duties of having to load and unload our suitcases, provide microphone tour narrative, and drive long distance each day was absurd. Also, his recommendations for lunch and things to see on our own was way off the mark. He didn't appear to have an idea of the concepts`of "vacation", "history", "art".......The Ring of Kerry, although incredibly beautiful, was a bus race as the driver was getting repeated calls from his girlfriend that was meeting him at the hotel at 5:00 Because of that, we didn't get to stop in Sneem, which was a huge disppointment. For the entire drive, we had three photo stops, and that was that. I boiled on that day. That place really requires time to contemplate the beauty.

I really would highly recommend renting a car, getting lost was half the fun of being on our own on an adventure. As an aside... many tour books and folks say stay away from Dublin with a car. Well.. I really tried to do that, but every morning as we were s Setting out on our destination, some how we would wind up in the center of Dublin. It was like my car was a magnet for the center of town. The signs were generally poor compared to other places I've been., It became my goal to go ANYWHERE to stay out of Dubulin with the car, but it was fruitless. We'd always wound up back there at the start of our day. At first I would panic, but then I came to expect it, would stop the car in my tracks and shrugged my shoulders to other drivers around me- most understood and laughed, and we moved on. The Garda were wonderful to me. I wanted to take them home.

All in all, Irleand is a beautiful place chocked full of history and fun things to do. Due to our exchange rate, I wouldn't consider going there again until the dollar improves- $1.45 to 1 euro is too uncomfortable to me. If I go again, it would definitely be to rent a car and have at it on my own terms.

Thanks for all your prior words of wisdom- especially the encouragement to rent the car during those days before the tour- that saved a trip that would otherwise have been a disaster given the quality of the tour.

Karen

Karen,

First off, welcome home! Where did you explore on your five days prior to the tour? I drove in Dublin only once and that put me off to EVER driving in Dublin again. It was very daunting,what with pedestrians jsut stepping out and cars zipping on to and out from side streets. You are very brave to have driven in to Dublin centre.
 
I am so surprised to hear that you had such a horrid time with CIE. YOu should definitely file a complaint with the head office. Their guides are usually highly professional, courteous and friendly. Their lodgings choices are usually impeccable. I am definitely a go-your-own-path type person, so organized tours and I would last for about two days maybe three max. You have a higher tolerance than I would have. I can guarantee that there would have been mutiny on the bus if I would have been on the receiving end of he sort of treatment to which you were subjected.

As for the dollar to euro rate, It may be quite a long time before they ever even out again. With that in mind, I just budget my monies whilst there and try not to mentally do the exchange rate in my head. It helps to keep you from going into holiday panic.

Slan Beo,

Bit

Hi Cowboy and Michele and thanks for the welcome home.

To answery cowboy's question, we were on our own for all of Dublin, Newgrange, Hill of Tara, Malahide, Trim Castle, Glendoloug, and Powescourt. We did these in 4 days, usuallly staying out till 10:30 at night. I loved the daylight till 11:00 pm, what a vaction treat that was.

When visting Dublin, we did use the bus and train, which worked out fine.

I would highly recommend doing the Musical Pub Crawl that starts at Gogarty's Pub in the Temple Bar area at 7:30 each night. Rick Steve's give it a 3 star in his book, and you also get a discount if you show the folks his book in person. The evening starts out on the second floor of Gogarty's which different musicians each night. The night we were there there was a bodhran, tenor banjo, and guitar. We listened to a few tunes there and then the musicians lead us to another pub accross Ha Penny bridge. The evening went till 10:00 pm.

I got my best cell phone deal by taking a cingular phone there, buying a sim card at "meteor", and got about 10 cents a minute and 50 cents a minute calling the USA. The treat is that now with the phone home, I'm still using the remainder of my money without having to dial the counrty code for the US. I wonder how they do that.

I also discovered that you can bargain quite a bit on the rental car. I called Kemwell, and told them of another car service that didn't charge airport pick-up. To give me a better price, they had my rental go through South America, where apparantly airport "taxes" for rental cars can't be charged. A good piece of information to know. Rental cars coming from different countries will get different fees and one can bargain for those fees in another country.

As far as CIE, I did call them on the second day, they told me to "write a letter when I got home". I will deal with them, however I'm currently sick from something I got on the plane I guess, so I'll wait till I get my steam in a couple of days.

Anyone have a good recipe for Beef and Guinness? We're hooked.

Karen

Karen-
I am so sorry you had a bad experience with CIE. I also went to Ireland last month with my aunt and we did a CIE tour- "Castles and Manors" Our tour experience was wonderful with them. With us a car is not an option as we are both "directionally challenged". I hope with your letter you get some kind of good outcome!!!! How did your son feel about the trip? I'm curious- what were the ages on your tour?

Hi Jessica:

Interesting to hear of your good experience with the Castles and Manors CIE tour.  I understand that with CIE, there are certain bus drivers/guides assigned to certain tours- I think that is a big factor in the quality.  Perhaps the guide for your tour had a personality more suited to the occupation.  Also, I'm wondering if your guide had to do all that our tour guide had to do.  Some of the CIE tours have both driver and guide, some just have the bus driver as guide as well.  As I mentioned before, I believe this is quite hard on the person to maintain the energy necessary to be entertaining and jolly.  That's a lot of work.  If the bus driver/guide is not an "entertaining" type of person, which I believe to be crucial to the occupation, than that sets the tone for the trip. 

We did run into another group on tour with CIE where I had a chance to speak with that tour guide, "David".  He was quite jolly and did show a slight frown when I mentioned we were on tour with "Eamon". I also did hear that this was "Eamon's" third tour as he was usually a bus driver for the country bus system- that was telling and perhaps a little of the grumpy bus driver flavor dripped into our experience.

As far as my son, he enjoyed himself as he made friends with three other folks his age on the tour- for which I was quite grateful.  He has already exchanged several emails with a nice young lady his age that he met on the tour.  Since he is a shy 18 year old, this was the shining light of his trip.  Since he knows so much of Irish history and music, I know he would have enjoyed seeing/getting information on more of those aspects of Ireland, which although requested, the bus driver didn't provide. 

The ages ranged from about 7 years old to 72.  I would say the tour experience was more geared towards the older ages.

Karen