Our flight landed in Dublin around 9pm, so we didn’t do much that night except get settled in the hotel. We stayed at Grafton Capital Hotel for slightly under $50 each. However, in the years since we were there, it has been significantly renovated and is now called the Grafton Hotel, and I suspect it is now unfortunately going to be significantly more costly than it was then.
The next morning we walked around the city a little on our way from the hotel to the Jameson factory. We had bought tickets ahead of time for about $15 each that got us an hour long guided tour. Along the way there was a taste comparison between Jameson, Jack, and a scotch, and a mixed drink available at the end of the tour, all of which were lumped into the cost.
As soon as that tour finished, we walked to the Guinness factory for a self-guided tour that took about an hour as well, and cost about $18 each. This tour finished on the top floor of the building where you could drink an included glass of Guinness while enjoying a 360 degree view of Dublin.
I’m a whiskey drinker not a beer drinker, and Ashley is a beer drinker not a whiskey drinker, so we kind of shuffled around the drinks that we got during the tours, then promptly went to get on several busses to get us to the Cliffs of Moher. In retrospect, really NOT the best idea we could have possibly had. Don’t get me wrong, seeing the beautiful Irish countryside by bus was an easy way to do it, but doing it so soon after drinking what we did that morning was where we went a little wrong. We took a bus from Dublin to Galway, then another from Galway to Kilcolgan Bradley’s, and finally one from there to Doolin Rainbow Hostel. These were all figured out ahead of time by looking at online schedules .
When we finally arrived, we checked in at the Cliffs of Moher hotel . We were both a little surprised by how few things there were around us – it was really a pretty small village that we were staying in, and there were not a lot of hotels or restaurants considering how close (4km) it was to the cliffs.
The next morning, after talking with the hotel staff, we contacted a local man who ran a private cab company (he charged people to drive them places in his own van). It was a little shady, and a little more expensive, but there weren’t a lot of bus options in the village we were staying with, so that was how we got from the hotel to the Cliffs of Moher. Sadly, when we got out of the van and started walking toward the cliffs, we discovered it was so foggy that we would be able to see virtually nothing. We waited inside at the gift shop for a bit, hoping it would clear up, but to no avail. A guide we talked to told us that it got foggy like that about once a month, but if we came back the next day we should be able to see them just fine. Unfortunately, we were due to be on our way to London the next day, so we were really just out of luck, which was really depressing for both of us as the Cliffs were one of the things we were most looking forward to.
We contacted our cab driver again, and he drove us from the Cliffs to a horse riding tour we had booked ahead of time (50 euros each) with Mountain View Trekking. I have this strange habit of wanting to ride horses in as many countries as I possibly can, and thought that seeing the Cliffs of Moher from horseback would be a pretty cool way to go. Thanks to the fog, we didn’t get any good views of the Cliffs themselves, but it was a fairly enjoyable ride, save for the time when Tinkerbell spooked and decided to take me galloping off into the fog covered unknown for a few minutes.
We had looked into a boat tour that would let us see the Cliffs from the water, but between the fog and the time our horse ride ended, ultimately decided that it wouldn’t make sense, and spent the rest of the night resting in the hotel.
Ireland probably ended up being the most rushed and disappointing leg of our entire trip. It was a combination of bad luck and bad planning, and I plan to expand on this a lot in our summary/what would we change post which will be coming soon. I do know that Ashley and I both still have the Cliffs of Moher on our bucket lists, so we will definitely get back there some day!
Total cost for Ireland (including transportation there, but not food/taxis/souvenirs/etc): ~$150
