Weddingbee boards

My husband and I spent three weeks in Ireland for our honeymoon, from the end of May - June. It was AMAZING! This isn't a destination that usually comes to mind when people think "honeymoon," but it totally should be. It's so beautiful, the people are great, and while it may not be a tropical/beachy kind of place, the country has the same laid-back vibe to it.

I thought I'd share some photos in case other couples are planning to honeymoon there (or you need to be convinced that it's one of the greatest travel destinations ever!)

So, we began our trip in Dublin...

St. Stephen's Green

We stayed at Butler Townhouse Hotel (LOVED IT), which was just a block away from Aviva Stadium. This pic was taken at about ten o clock at night, after a game had finished, and it was still light out. Yay northern hemisphere!

The drawing room at Butlers

We took an ancient history tour with Mary Gibbons, who was extremely knowledgable and made for a great tour guide. She even drove us back to Butlers herself at the end of the tour!

Hill of Tara

Newgrange

Powerscourt House & Gardens

Military Road tour through the Wicklow Mountains

Glendalough

More posts to come. Three weeks + lots of pretty countryside=ridiculous amount of pics. If you want any specifics of the trip, just ask!

These are beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!

I love it!! When I went Wicklow was incredible. And Glendalough too. Where all did you go? I really want to go back and take FI sometime. We had to decide between Ireland and Italy for our HM and it was super tough but Italy won out this time because we met in a class about anchient art, much of which is in Italy! I cant wait to see your pictures!

I love it!  Thank you so much for sharing.  My father is Irish and visited often, but I have never seen it in person.  You've taken such beautiful pics... can't wait to see more.

I've always wanted to visit Ireland, it's so beautiful! Great pics, I hope you post more :) The history and scenery are both amazing. FI and I won't be taking a honeymoon right away, but hopefully in the future we'll be visiting Ireland and the UK :)

@MrsRuby: @stokieGal: @jjmomma: @MrsGolden2Bee: @MrsAlbright: @galloway111: Thanks so much! 

@Stassney: Haha...baaaaaht of course!

I miss the sheep. Not gonna lie.

@chasesgirl: Hmm. OK, the official list. In Dublin area we saw the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin Castle, St. Stephen's Green, both Butler's Chocolate shops, Hill of Tara, Newgrange, the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl (AMAZING!), Powerscourt, Trinity College/Book of Kells, Temple Bar (dirty and not worth it – I was *thisclose* to going off at those menu hawkers), and generally saw a lot of the city on foot.

From there we took the Military Road tour through the Wicklow Mountains, saw Glendalough, Waterford Crystal Factory, took the Copper Coast drive (where we discovered “our” abandoned castle), Kilkenny (party central), Kilkenny Castle, Jerpoint Abbey, Rock of Cashel (only OK), Cahir Castle (our favorite castle tour), the Swiss Cottage, Galway, the Aran Isles, the Burren, the Cliffs of Moher, Dromoland Castle (amaaaaaaazing), the Ring of Kerry, and finally, Valentia Island where we rented a cottage for a week in Glanleam Gardens (heaven on earth).

So, we saw a LOT while we were there! There are things we didn’t do on this trip that we’d like to do next time around. We only passed through some really charming towns (Kildare for example), and didn’t go on the Guinness Factory and Jameson Factory tours for lack of time, check out Connemara which all the Irish raved about, visit Doolin the music capital, go to Northern Ireland or the Giant's Causeway and Dark Hedges, etc.

@hisgoosiegirl: Total cost of the trip was around 10K. Half of that was eaten up by airfare ($2000), our splurge stay at Dromoland Castle ($1200), the car rental ($1000), and food ($???). [Runners-up on price: Butlers Townhouse Hotel for $600, weeklong cottage rental for $750. All other accomodations were quite inexpensive]

Food was ridiculously pricey. We were eating out almost the entire time, prices were higher than in the US, and the conversion rate was bad.

However, there are ways to avoid the food costs - every place we stayed offered a complimentary (and HUGE) breakfast, which we filled up on to last us through dinner.

More pics coming up, I just need to upload them. :)

@natbug21: I'm sure any time you make for the trip will be worth it! :)

The Waterford Crystal Factory tour was a lot of fun! I don't know how those guys can concentrate with so many people watching them.

Our tour guide at Glendalough recommended we take the Copper Coast drive. I'm soooo glad we did! It was a little bit out of our way, but it was just beautiful. Some of our favorite parts of the trip happened on these scenic drives where we would get lost on back roads.

It was on this drive we discovered our abandonded castle...

The view from the top

Jerpoint Abbey

Rock of Cashel

The Swiss Cottage. This is Ireland's version of the Petit Hameau de la Reine. No pictures allowed inside. It was very charming - no two elements of the house are alike, to give it the air that it sprang out of the ground. Every door/window is a different shape and size, the patterns on the exterior are all different, the floors are slightly slanted, etc. What I remember best about this place is the climbing roses around the door that smelled incredible!

The Aran Isles

@hisgoosiegirl: Shoot, I just realized I didn't answer the second part of your question! We planned it all ourselves. After requesting a quote from a travel agency, the markup was way too high to justify and we didn't feel that we got enough personalization out of the packages. We'd already done so much research that we knew exactly what we wanted - it was only a matter of finding the right places to stay.

Planning it on our own is one of the reasons we could stay as long as we did. Going through a travel agency would have been much more expensive.

The Burren - this place was awesome!

The Cliffs of Moher

Our room at Dromoland...we don't have many pics here. We hung out, ate great food, drank in the swanky lounge, rowed around the lake, and went on a "hawk walk."

And finally...Valentia Island! My new favorite place on earth!

Our cottage at Glanleam Gardens

The people that own Glanleam now run it as a farm as well as a garden, so we had lots of animal friends to visit.

The gardens are subtropical, meaning there were lots of palm trees, fuschia, and the plants grew to enormous size. It was so incredibly lush and magical!

@hisgoosiegirl: Haha...I know, right? The US is starved for old buildings. We would go to pubs and I'd be amazed that places the Irish drank were hundreds of years older than my country!

Such beautiful shots!!! I'm a little jealous!  We were in Ireland in March/April but it was a golf holiday for my FI so spent A LOT of time at the golf courses, and not quite as much time sightseeing.  Looks like we missed out on some amazing things!!!

@Minutiae: Wow. Sounds a lot like what I did when I went a few years ago. If you ever get the chance to go back. Kildare, Doolin and the Causeway Coast are TOTALLY worth it. Doolin was great, there was a lot of tourists in the pub but once the tour buses left and we stuck around the REAL local musicians came out and was incredible. There is a great little town a few miles from the Giants Causeway that was great and it is near some of the most spectacular scenery I have ever seen. I thought the Cliffs of Moher were cool, then we hiked between the Causeway and Carrick-a-Reid and it was mind blowing. This is bad, your pictures have just made me want to go back again so much! 

I bet staying in a castle was amazing. We rocked the youth hostels when we were there so nothing close to that incredible. Although I have to say, both Kilkenny and Cahir castles were my great-great (times a lot) uncles castles.

The burren was such a different sort of landscape than I have ever seen! Did yall see any of the neolithic sites there?

It really looks like an amazing time! Your pictures are great!!

@nickels: During the summer (we were there end of May - mid June). Northern hemisphere and all...we had very, very long days for exploring!

@chasesgirl: No, we didn't see any neolithic sites...the whole Burren experience was a near-disaster, actually, because we almost drove through the entire thing! We also got stuck driving on a one-lane hiking trail around the edge of a mountain with a truck pulling a horse trailer driving in the opposite direction. This is a surprisingly common conundrum in IE.

I will admit, I do *not* miss the Irish roads!

Next time we go I want to see more of the Burren, including that perfume shop that sounded fascinating.

Oh, and I also forgot to add the pics from our adventure on the Skelligs! We almost didn't get to fit this in because of bad weather (the water was too rough for the boats to travel). The day before we left, we finally got the phone call that waters were calm enough to head out!

FYI, that is bird poo and not snow. The skelligs are home to huge bird colonies.

Endless stairs of death. There were many signs warning of the dangers of extreme stairs.

Monastic dry stone huts...

It started raining at one point and we took shelter in the huts. Those suckers were *completely* dry inside, and when you consider that these are just rocks stacked carefully on top of each other, you have to be impressed by the workmanship!

One of the many gulls...

And one of the puffins!

@katwed2012: Sure! We didn't encounter many problems, but here was our experience...

-My husband and I have very different traveling styles, which caused some conflict during the trip (he likes to have multiple activities planned every day, I'm super low key). On busy days I would be exhausted and grouchy, on slow days he would be restless and grouchy. So we had to find a balance, and there were some parts of the trip that each of us enjoyed more than others.

-Driving the Irish roads was difficult. The roads are extremely narrow and I never got used to that! I constantly felt like we were about to hit other cars or were running into the stone walls that lined 90% of the country roads.

-Here's what I said on costs earlier in the thread: 

Total cost of the trip was around 10K. Half of that was eaten up by airfare ($2000), our splurge stay at Dromoland Castle ($1200), the car rental ($1000), and food ($???). [Runners-up on price: 3 nights at Butlers Townhouse Hotel for $600, weeklong cottage rental for $750.] All other accomodations were quite inexpensive. It would be possible to do this trip for "cheap" because there are so many wonderful B&Bs. Food was just ridiculously expensive.

MONEY TIPS:

• US citizens need to turn off wireless roaming on their cellphone, or they will get hit with massive roaming charges. (Also make sure you have an international phone plan to reduce cost of long distance calls)
• Get the rental car insurance and GPS. They'll cost you, but will save you a LOT of misery!
• We could have saved on tour money by getting a Heritage Card (one payment, and free visits to all heritage sites after that)
• Try to stay in places with complimentary breakfasts. Eat big breakfasts, and go to restaurants with early bird dinner specials to avoid food costs.
• You can get VAT back, but unless you're making big purchases it's mostly just a PITA.

FAVORITE PLACES TO STAY:

• Butlers Townhouse Hotel, Dublin [$$]
• Dromoland Castle, Co. Clare/West Ireland [$$$]
• Butler Court, Kilkenny [$]

Least favorite places to stay: Waterford Castle, Baileys Hotel Cashel

FAVORITE ATTRACTIONS/PLACES/TOURS

• Dublin Literary Pub Crawl
• Chester Beatty Library/Book of Kells in Dublin
• Mary Gibbons tour, ancient sites around Dublin
• Biking around the Aran Isles
• Skellig Isles (not a trip for the elderly, infirm, and people who suffer from extreme seasickness)
• Cahir Castle
• Any scenic drive: Military Road, Copper Coast, the Burren, Ring of Kerry, Ring of Beara, etc.
• Any cliffs: Cliffs of Moher, Dun Aengus on the Aran Isles, etc.
• Pretty much everything, actually!

Least favorite attractions: Kilkenny Castle, Rock of Cashel [We didn't go on the Guinness tour or see the Blarney Stone. Shocker!]

 
Sidenote: We were in Ireland right on the tail trip of Obama's visit. We actually flew in during the volcanic eruption and had no idea what was up until we arrived in Dublin and people were bummed he left early. There were photos of him hanging in pubs, and his face was even on their bread! Apparently the Irish reaaaaaally like our president...

@katwed2012: Yess, another convert! Haha. Let me know if you need any more info!