11 day itinerary decisions
Hi everyone! My wife and I are currently planning an anniversary/late honeymoon road trip around Ireland and I’m looking for some help overcoming my decision paralysis. I’m looking for personal opinions and experiences regarding the specific questions posed at the end.
We’re coming in late October (Oct 23 - Nov 3) and driving pretty much the entire island, with the intent to attend the Halloween festival in Derry on Halloween.
Here’s the barebones itinerary, as I’m still working on it:
Oct 23 - Arrive in Dublin, get a car and immediately drive to Kilkenny for a night stay
Oct 24-25 - Cobh/Cork
Oct 25-26 - Anniversary stay in Tralee
Oct 26 - Backtrack to Kenmare to start Ring of Kerry
Oct 26 - 28 - Ring of Kerry (plus Dingle Peninsula?)
Oct 28 - 29 - Galway
Oct 30 - Arrive in Derry
Oct 31 - Halloween Festival
Nov 1 - Giant’s Causeway -> Belfast
Nov 2 - Back to Dublin
Nov 3 - Departure flight
I’m working on our itinerary and I’m starting to try to make some cuts so that we can actually slow down and enjoy the trip instead of trying to cram everything in. So I have 2 main decisions I am looking for opinions on. Looking for personal opinions/experience/antecdotes:
- Is the Dingle Peninsula a MUST SEE, or would it make sense to cut it from the itinerary all together if doing so would allow us 2 days to enjoy the Ring of Kerry and 2 nights in the Galway area (as opposed to trying to cram Dingle in between and only getting one day for Kerry and one day for Galway)?
- We’ll be getting a car in Dublin and immediately getting out of the city when we arrive to start the trip — so we won’t really see Dublin to start the trip. BUT we’ll have 2 days after the Halloween festival in Derry and the only thing we really want to see after that is Giant’s Causeway. So my question is, would it be better to do one of those nights in Belfast and one in Dublin — to cut down on being in the car so long and just to see Belfast — or should we just skip Belfast and get back to Dublin for the extra night so we have a full day in Dublin before flying out the next day?