Ireland Itinerary: 6 Days in Dublin, Galway, Killarney and County Kerry
Six days across the island west to the Atlantic: two in Dublin for the literature, the history, and the pubs that earned the reputation, two in Galway on the edge of the Irish-speaking west, and two in Kerry, where the mountains meet the sea and the road gets famous.
Ireland ranked #40 worldwide with 9.4 million international arrivals (2024, UN Tourism data compiled by worlddata.info; Ireland's Central Statistics Office rebuilt its overseas-travel survey after a 2020–21 suspension, so national and international figures for recent years are not directly comparable). Last reviewed 2026-08-08.
Ireland · 6 days Dublin → Galway → Killarney and County Kerry
Best time: May, June, and September, long evenings.
Dublin: Trinity College and the Book of KellsDay 1
🏛️9:00 AMTrinity College and the Book of Kells
The 1592 university and its ninth-century illuminated gospels, under the barrel-vaulted Long Room. Book the timed slot; the library reopened its upper gallery in 2025 after a conservation programme that removed every book.
🚶 ~7 min · 🚗 ~1 min · 0.2 mi
🖼️1:30 PMNational Museum of Ireland, Archaeology
The Iron Age bog bodies and the Tara Brooch, free to enter. The gold hoards from the Bronze Age are startling and almost nobody outside Ireland knows they exist.
🚶 ~14 min · 🚗 ~2 min · 0.5 mi
🌆6:00 PMTemple Bar
The cobbled riverside quarter, genuinely historic, thoroughly touristed, and priced accordingly. Walk it, photograph it, then drink two streets away where the locals are.
Dublin: Kilmainham GaolDay 2
🏛️9:00 AMKilmainham Gaol
The prison where the 1916 Rising leaders were executed, and where the modern Irish state effectively begins. Guided entry only, timed, and sold out days ahead in summer.
🚶 ~34 min · 🚗 ~4 min · 1.3 mi
🥾1:30 PMPhoenix Park
One of Europe's largest enclosed city parks at 707 hectares, with a free-roaming fallow deer herd that has been there since the 1660s. Twice the size of New York's Central Park.
🚗 ~11 min · 3.1 mi
🎟️6:00 PMLiterary pub crawl
Actors performing Joyce, Behan, and Beckett between four pubs the writers actually used. It sounds like a gimmick and is the best-reviewed tour in the city for a reason.
Arrive in GalwayDay 3
🚌8:30 AMCoach to Galway
Dublin to Galway in about 2h30 by direct intercity coach from Dublin city centre, running roughly hourly. The train from Heuston takes about 2h20 and is more comfortable; the coach is cheaper and picks up more centrally.
🚌 ~2h30 · 129 mi
🚶 Shop Street on foot
🏛️2:00 PMSpanish Arch and the Claddagh
A fragment of the 1584 city wall on the riverbank, beside the old fishing village that gave the world the Claddagh ring. The Corrib runs past fast and cold.
🚶 ~3 min · 🚗 ~1 min · 0.1 mi
🌆6:00 PMLatin Quarter
The medieval lanes from Eyre Square down to the Spanish Arch: buskers, painted shopfronts, and more traditional-music sessions per square metre than anywhere in the country.
Galway: Galway CathedralDay 4
🏛️9:00 AMGalway Cathedral
Finished in 1965 in cut limestone with a green copper dome, built on the site of the old city gaol. Startlingly young for a building that looks Renaissance.
🚶 ~11 min · 🚗 ~1 min · 0.4 mi
🖼️1:30 PMGalway City Museum
Free, small, and good on the medieval merchant city and the Claddagh fishing community. Twenty minutes well spent before you walk the same streets.
🚗 day trip · 40 mi
🎟️6:00 PMConnemara and Kylemore day trip
A full-day coach loop through the bogs and mountains with stops at the abbey and Killary fjord. The alternative to renting a car for one day of narrow roads.
Arrive in Killarney and County KerryDay 5
🚌8:30 AMCoach to Killarney and County Kerry
Galway to Killarney in about 4h30 by Bus Éireann via Limerick, the direct west-coast option. By train it means changing at Limerick Junction and takes about the same. Drivers can do it in roughly 3h30 and pick up the coast on the way.
🚌 ~4h30 · 118 mi
🚲 Park by bike
🏛️2:00 PMMuckross House and Gardens
A Victorian mansion on the lake shore, given to the state in 1932 to found the national park. The working traditional farms beside it show Kerry life before rural electrification.
🚗 ~10 min · 2.8 mi
🌆6:00 PMKillarney town
A compact grid of pubs, guesthouses, and outfitters at the park gates. The jaunting-car ponies waiting on the street are a two-century-old institution, not a recent invention.
Killarney and County Kerry: Ross CastleDay 6
🏛️9:00 AMRoss Castle
A fifteenth-century tower house on the edge of Lough Leane, the last place in Munster to fall to Cromwell's forces. Boats leave from here for the lakes.
🚗 ~47 min · 13 mi
🖼️1:30 PMKerry Bog Village Museum
A reconstructed pre-famine turf-cutting settlement on the Ring of Kerry, with Irish wolfhounds and bog ponies. Small, and it explains the landscape you have been driving through.
🚗 ~36 min · 10 mi
🎟️6:00 PMGap of Dunloe pony trap and boat
The classic Killarney day: horse-drawn through the pass, then rowed back across the three lakes. Been run this way since Victorian tourists started coming.
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Best time to goMay, June, and September, long evenings. Everything open, and the crowds of July and August thinned out. It rains in every month, so the real question is daylight: June gives you until half ten at night, December gives you until four.
Recommended splitDublin 2d · Galway 2d · Killarney and County Kerry 2d
Local tip: Book Kilmainham Gaol the moment you know your dates. It is timed-entry, sells out days ahead all summer, and is the one Dublin site people arrive expecting to walk into. Also: the Wild Atlantic Way is a driving route, but Dublin–Galway–Killarney all connect by comfortable intercity coach if you would rather not take on left-hand lanes.
Dublin, 2 days
A small capital that produced four Nobel literature laureates and spends a lot of energy pretending not to be proud of it. The Georgian streets, the Liffey, and a rebellion that started in a post office are all within a walk, and the pub is still where the city does its talking.
Neighborhoods to base yourself inTemple Bar. The cobbled riverside quarter, genuinely historic, thoroughly touristed, and priced accordingly. Walk it, photograph it, then drink two streets away where the locals are.Georgian Dublin. Merrion and Fitzwilliam Squares, where eighteenth-century brick terraces run for blocks and every door is a different colour, reportedly out of pure contrariness.The Liberties. The old working city west of the centre, the Guinness brewery, distilleries, markets, and the oldest street names in Dublin.
LandmarksTrinity College and the Book of Kells. The 1592 university and its ninth-century illuminated gospels, under the barrel-vaulted Long Room. Book the timed slot; the library reopened its upper gallery in 2025 after a conservation programme that removed every book.Kilmainham Gaol. The prison where the 1916 Rising leaders were executed, and where the modern Irish state effectively begins. Guided entry only, timed, and sold out days ahead in summer.Christ Church Cathedral. Founded about 1030 by Dublin's Norse king, with a vast crypt, the largest in Britain or Ireland, holding a mummified cat and rat found in the organ pipes.General Post Office, O'Connell Street. The building the rebels seized at Easter 1916, still a working post office, still carrying bullet marks on its columns. The witness-history exhibition inside is the clearest account of that week.
Nature and outdoorsPhoenix Park. One of Europe's largest enclosed city parks at 707 hectares, with a free-roaming fallow deer herd that has been there since the 1660s. Twice the size of New York's Central Park.Howth Cliff Walk. A fishing village at the end of the DART line, with a looped clifftop path over the sea and Dublin Bay behind you. Half a day, no car, and the best air in the county.
MuseumsNational Museum of Ireland, Archaeology. The Iron Age bog bodies and the Tara Brooch, free to enter. The gold hoards from the Bronze Age are startling and almost nobody outside Ireland knows they exist.Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI). Joyce's Dublin done properly, in a Georgian house on St Stephen's Green with the first copy of Ulysses. Better than trying to read the city off plaques.
Worth a guided tourLiterary pub crawl. Actors performing Joyce, Behan, and Beckett between four pubs the writers actually used. It sounds like a gimmick and is the best-reviewed tour in the city for a reason.Guinness Storehouse self-guided visit. Seven floors in the old fermentation plant, ending with a pint in a glass-walled bar over the whole city. Touristy, unembarrassed about it, and the rooftop view is real.
Getting around DublinWalk the centre. It is smaller than it looks. The DART commuter rail runs along the coast to Howth and Dún Laoghaire; buses and the Luas tram cover the rest. A Leap Visitor Card covers all of it for a flat daily rate.
Galway, 2 days
Getting here: Coach, Dublin to Galway in about 2h30 by direct intercity coach from Dublin city centre, running roughly hourly. The train from Heuston takes about 2h20 and is more comfortable; the coach is cheaper and picks up more centrally.
A small harbour city that behaves like a much bigger one, street musicians on Shop Street year-round, a festival calendar that never quite stops, and the Gaeltacht beginning just outside the city where Irish is still the working language. It is also the launch point for Connemara and the Cliffs of Moher.
Neighborhoods to base yourself inLatin Quarter. The medieval lanes from Eyre Square down to the Spanish Arch: buskers, painted shopfronts, and more traditional-music sessions per square metre than anywhere in the country.Salthill. The seaside promenade west of the centre, where the custom is to walk to the end and kick the wall before turning back. Locals swim off Blackrock diving tower year-round.
LandmarksSpanish Arch and the Claddagh. A fragment of the 1584 city wall on the riverbank, beside the old fishing village that gave the world the Claddagh ring. The Corrib runs past fast and cold.Galway Cathedral. Finished in 1965 in cut limestone with a green copper dome, built on the site of the old city gaol. Startlingly young for a building that looks Renaissance.Kylemore Abbey. A Victorian castle on a Connemara lake, built as a gift and now run by Benedictine nuns, with a restored six-acre walled garden. The most photographed building in the west.
Nature and outdoorsCliffs of Moher. Fourteen kilometres of Atlantic cliff face rising to 214m in County Clare. Go early or late for light and space; drivers now need pre-booked timed parking at the visitor centre.Connemara. Bog, quartzite mountains, and a coastline of inlets north-west of the city, the Twelve Bens, Killary Harbour, and stretches where Irish is simply what people speak.Aran Islands. Three limestone islands out in Galway Bay, reached by ferry from Rossaveal. Inis Mór holds Dún Aonghasa, a prehistoric stone fort on the lip of a 100m cliff, and the way to see it is by rented bicycle.
MuseumsGalway City Museum. Free, small, and good on the medieval merchant city and the Claddagh fishing community. Twenty minutes well spent before you walk the same streets.
Worth a guided tourConnemara and Kylemore day trip. A full-day coach loop through the bogs and mountains with stops at the abbey and Killary fjord. The alternative to renting a car for one day of narrow roads.Traditional music session. Not a performance, musicians in a circle in a pub corner playing for each other, and you happen to be there. Ask which pub has a session tonight; the answer changes nightly and everyone knows it.
Getting around GalwayThe city centre is walkable in fifteen minutes end to end. Day-trip coaches to the Cliffs, Connemara, and the Aran ferry all leave from the coach station beside Eyre Square.
Killarney and County Kerry, 2 days
Getting here: Coach, Galway to Killarney in about 4h30 by Bus Éireann via Limerick, the direct west-coast option. By train it means changing at Limerick Junction and takes about the same. Drivers can do it in roughly 3h30 and pick up the coast on the way.
Ireland's oldest national park, its highest mountains, and the coast road that made the country's reputation abroad. Killarney is a small town that has been receiving visitors since the 1750s and is entirely unembarrassed about it, which makes it an easy base for two days of very good scenery.
Neighborhoods to base yourself inKillarney town. A compact grid of pubs, guesthouses, and outfitters at the park gates. The jaunting-car ponies waiting on the street are a two-century-old institution, not a recent invention.Dingle Peninsula. The next headland north, Slea Head's road hugging the cliff, beehive huts from the early monastic period, and a harbour town where Irish is spoken daily.
LandmarksMuckross House and Gardens. A Victorian mansion on the lake shore, given to the state in 1932 to found the national park. The working traditional farms beside it show Kerry life before rural electrification.Ross Castle. A fifteenth-century tower house on the edge of Lough Leane, the last place in Munster to fall to Cromwell's forces. Boats leave from here for the lakes.Skellig Michael. A sixth-century monastery on a pyramid of rock eleven kilometres out in the Atlantic, and a UNESCO site. Landings run roughly May to September, cap out at 180 people a day, and cancel on any real swell, treat a booking as a maybe.
Nature and outdoorsKillarney National Park. Ireland's first, 26,000 acres of lakes, oak woods, and mountain, holding the country's only wild red deer herd, continuously present since the last ice age.Gap of Dunloe. A narrow glacial pass between MacGillycuddy's Reeks and Purple Mountain, walked, cycled, or ridden by pony trap, with a boat back across the lakes to Ross Castle.Ring of Kerry. The 179km circuit of the Iveragh Peninsula: coast, mountain, and beach. Coaches run it counter-clockwise, so drivers going the same way meet fewer of them head-on.Torc Waterfall. A twenty-metre cascade five minutes off the road inside the park, with a stepped path above it to a viewpoint over the lakes. The easiest good thing in Kerry.
MuseumsKerry Bog Village Museum. A reconstructed pre-famine turf-cutting settlement on the Ring of Kerry, with Irish wolfhounds and bog ponies. Small, and it explains the landscape you have been driving through.
Worth a guided tourGap of Dunloe pony trap and boat. The classic Killarney day: horse-drawn through the pass, then rowed back across the three lakes. Been run this way since Victorian tourists started coming.Ring of Kerry coach day. The full circuit with a driver who knows where to stop, which is most of the value, the good pull-offs are unmarked and the road is narrow.
Getting around Killarney and County KerryThe town is walkable and the park starts at its edge. Bikes rent everywhere and are the best way into the park. A car or a coach tour is needed for the Ring and Dingle.
The full plan as text
The same day-by-day plan, expandable day by day. Times are starting points, not homework.
Day 1: Dublin: Trinity College and the Book of Kells
9:00 AMTrinity College and the Book of Kells
The 1592 university and its ninth-century illuminated gospels, under the barrel-vaulted Long Room. Book the timed slot; the library reopened its upper gallery in 2025 after a conservation programme that removed every book.
1:30 PMNational Museum of Ireland, Archaeology
The Iron Age bog bodies and the Tara Brooch, free to enter. The gold hoards from the Bronze Age are startling and almost nobody outside Ireland knows they exist.
6:00 PMTemple Bar
The cobbled riverside quarter, genuinely historic, thoroughly touristed, and priced accordingly. Walk it, photograph it, then drink two streets away where the locals are.
Day 2: Dublin: Kilmainham Gaol
9:00 AMKilmainham Gaol
The prison where the 1916 Rising leaders were executed, and where the modern Irish state effectively begins. Guided entry only, timed, and sold out days ahead in summer.
1:30 PMPhoenix Park
One of Europe's largest enclosed city parks at 707 hectares, with a free-roaming fallow deer herd that has been there since the 1660s. Twice the size of New York's Central Park.
6:00 PMLiterary pub crawl
Actors performing Joyce, Behan, and Beckett between four pubs the writers actually used. It sounds like a gimmick and is the best-reviewed tour in the city for a reason.
Day 3: Arrive in Galway
8:30 AMCoach to Galway
Dublin to Galway in about 2h30 by direct intercity coach from Dublin city centre, running roughly hourly. The train from Heuston takes about 2h20 and is more comfortable; the coach is cheaper and picks up more centrally.
2:00 PMSpanish Arch and the Claddagh
A fragment of the 1584 city wall on the riverbank, beside the old fishing village that gave the world the Claddagh ring. The Corrib runs past fast and cold.
6:00 PMLatin Quarter
The medieval lanes from Eyre Square down to the Spanish Arch: buskers, painted shopfronts, and more traditional-music sessions per square metre than anywhere in the country.
Day 4: Galway: Galway Cathedral
9:00 AMGalway Cathedral
Finished in 1965 in cut limestone with a green copper dome, built on the site of the old city gaol. Startlingly young for a building that looks Renaissance.
1:30 PMGalway City Museum
Free, small, and good on the medieval merchant city and the Claddagh fishing community. Twenty minutes well spent before you walk the same streets.
6:00 PMConnemara and Kylemore day trip
A full-day coach loop through the bogs and mountains with stops at the abbey and Killary fjord. The alternative to renting a car for one day of narrow roads.
Day 5: Arrive in Killarney and County Kerry
8:30 AMCoach to Killarney and County Kerry
Galway to Killarney in about 4h30 by Bus Éireann via Limerick, the direct west-coast option. By train it means changing at Limerick Junction and takes about the same. Drivers can do it in roughly 3h30 and pick up the coast on the way.
2:00 PMMuckross House and Gardens
A Victorian mansion on the lake shore, given to the state in 1932 to found the national park. The working traditional farms beside it show Kerry life before rural electrification.
6:00 PMKillarney town
A compact grid of pubs, guesthouses, and outfitters at the park gates. The jaunting-car ponies waiting on the street are a two-century-old institution, not a recent invention.
Day 6: Killarney and County Kerry: Ross Castle
9:00 AMRoss Castle
A fifteenth-century tower house on the edge of Lough Leane, the last place in Munster to fall to Cromwell's forces. Boats leave from here for the lakes.
1:30 PMKerry Bog Village Museum
A reconstructed pre-famine turf-cutting settlement on the Ring of Kerry, with Irish wolfhounds and bog ponies. Small, and it explains the landscape you have been driving through.
6:00 PMGap of Dunloe pony trap and boat
The classic Killarney day: horse-drawn through the pass, then rowed back across the three lakes. Been run this way since Victorian tourists started coming.
Make this Ireland trip yours
Forward your real booking confirmations to Petrel and it builds this exact day-by-day view for you: flights, hotels, reservations, live flight status, and the travel time between stops. Under a minute.
Start your free tripFirst trip free. No account, no credit card.