Four Nights in Ireland: Kilkenny, Kerry, Cliffs, and a Whole LOT of Castles

Four nights in Ireland.

Castles, ancient towns, the Ring of Kerry, working sheepdogs, a boat ride to the Cliffs of Moher, and some of the most beautiful countryside we’ve ever seen.

And we never actually visited Dublin.

Not once.

How do you fly into Dublin, spend four nights driving around Ireland, and manage to miss the country’s capital entirely?

Well, when Linda and I travel, we tend to get a lot of miles out of our days.

Sometimes literally.

We had four nights, an itinerary, a rental car, and places we wanted to see. We weren’t particularly interested in waiting around for buses or organized tours to take us everywhere.

We wanted to experience Ireland on our own schedule.

Our plan was pretty simple. Start in Dublin, head south to Kilkenny, west to Kerry, north toward the Cliffs of Moher, and then east again for our final night near Dublin Airport.

And somewhere along the way, see as many castles as Linda could find.

Our Four-Night Ireland Route

Here’s the loop we made around Ireland. We drove between our destinations but let somebody else handle the Ring of Kerry bus tour.

Of course, there was one little complication.

They drive on the wrong side of the road in Ireland.

And apparently, they expect you to do the same.

Day 1: Dublin Airport to Kilkenny Castle

Left Is Your Friend!

We picked up our rental car at Dublin Airport and headed toward our first destination, Kilkenny Castle.

I’d already driven a rental car around London by myself for a day, so I figured Ireland would be easier with Linda helping.

Besides, I’ve been driving for decades. Driving is something I’m good at.

How hard could this be?

Well, I made my first right turn and promptly ended up on the wrong side of the road.

The actual wrong side.

The side where you’re about to become a story on the evening news.

That’s when Linda introduced the phrase that would become the soundtrack of our Irish adventure.

“LEFT IS YOUR FRIEND!”

She didn’t say it softly.

Now, understand that everything about driving felt backward. I was sitting on the right side of the car, driving on the left side of the road, and shifting our manual transmission with my left hand.

And then came the roundabouts.

I could get into them.

Getting out apparently required a little more training.

We went around and around while Linda shouted directions and I tried to figure out which exit we were supposed to take.

Normally, Linda works on her laptop while I drive. That’s how we managed our business while traveling full-time.

Not in Ireland.

She opened her laptop, took one look at what was happening outside the windshield, and promptly closed it.

Apparently, keeping us alive was going to require her full attention.

But we were laughing.

A LOT.

Fortunately, Kilkenny Castle is about an hour and a half from Dublin Airport. It was an easy destination to find, and the drive was just long enough to get our bearings and begin settling into this new driving situation.

By the time we arrived, I was starting to get the hang of it.

And we were both ready to get out of the car.

Kilkenny Castle: A Good Place to Change Your Britches

Kilkenny Castle was an excellent first stop.

It was easy to find, easy to get to, and well worth the drive.

And after our introduction to Irish roads, it was a great opportunity to get out and change our britches. 😁

Now, you can’t travel around Ireland without running into castles. They’re practically part of the landscape.

But Kilkenny Castle is particularly interesting.

The castle’s medieval history stretches back to the 12th century, and it was associated with the powerful Butler family for nearly 600 years.

Over those centuries, the Butlers made changes to the castle to accommodate the way they wanted to live.

I found that particularly interesting.

We tend to imagine a castle as something that stays the same for hundreds of years. But these were people’s homes. As generations came and went, they renovated, modernized, and changed their surroundings, just as we do.

Granted, most of us aren’t remodeling a castle.

There’s probably a different permitting process.

But one of the most fascinating things we saw during our tour was a room where the restoration helped tell the story of the castle itself.

The Room With the Chinese Wallpaper

The Chinese Withdrawing Room was one of our favorite discoveries.

The room contained remnants of beautiful, hand-painted wallpaper that had originally been brought from China for the castle.

According to the castle’s history, Walter Butler, the 18th Earl of Ormonde, had three rooms decorated with Chinese wallpaper around 1801.

Only fragments of one of those original wall coverings survive.

Rather than making everything look brand new, the restoration allowed visitors to see the surviving wallpaper alongside the restored treatment.

And that’s what caught our attention.

You could see the old, faded material and compare it with the work that had been done around it. The contrast was remarkable.

It was almost as though the restoration had stopped halfway so we could see both sides of the story.

What had survived.

And what had been brought back.

There was something fascinating about standing in a room looking at wall coverings that had been hanging there for more than two hundred years.

And suddenly, all that history felt a little more real.

That’s why I’d encourage you to take the tour rather than simply walking around the castle grounds.

The building is beautiful from the outside, but the stories inside are what make it memorable.

And here’s one of our most important travel tips: Download your Google Maps for Ireland before you arrive. Make sure your downloaded areas cover the entire route, not just the cities. You don’t want to be navigating unfamiliar roads and discover you’ve lost your internet connection.

Give yourself time for the castle tour. The stories inside are worth it.

Visit Kilkenny Castle

Our First Night: Kilkenny House Boutique Hotel

After our castle visit, we headed to our accommodations for the evening.

We’d chosen Kilkenny House Boutique Hotel, a lovely little property with a beautiful traditional Irish pub.

Now, I need to explain something about the way we like to travel.

We enjoy a nice hotel as much as anybody. In fact, we seem to have developed a habit of finishing our trips somewhere particularly nice.

But when we’re visiting another country, we also want to experience the people and culture of the places we’re visiting.

And sometimes that means choosing accommodations that aren’t part of a giant hotel chain.

Most of the towns we visited along our Ireland route didn’t offer a bunch of familiar American hotel brands.

Which was fine with us.

That was part of the point.

We want to feel the place we’re visiting, not simply wake up in a room that could be anywhere in the world.

Kilkenny House was exactly the kind of place we enjoy.

When we arrived, there wasn’t the typical hotel front desk experience.

Instead, a very fine gentleman greeted us with our key and showed us to our room.

That was it.

No line. No complicated check-in procedure.

Just a personal welcome.

The hotel was very nice, and we felt almost as though we were the only guests there.

And the pub!

What a beautiful place.

The hotel’s traditional Dore’s Bar had exactly the kind of character we hoped to find when choosing a smaller Irish property.

It felt different.

And that’s what we wanted.

Kilkenny House Hotel

Day 2: Three Hours to Killarney and the Ring of Kerry

The next morning, we were back in the car and heading west toward Killarney.

Another three-hour drive.

Now, before you start thinking we must have been exhausted from all this driving, let me explain something.

Linda and I had spent two years traveling around the United States from house sit to house sit.

We weren’t just taking occasional road trips.

We were living on the road.

During those two years, we drove across the entire United States six times.

Three times back and forth.

So when somebody tells us a destination is three hours away, our first thought is pretty much, “That’s just down the street.”

We were accustomed to covering ground.

And that made our four-night Ireland itinerary feel very doable.

Of course, there was one significant difference between our American road trips and driving around Ireland.

Castles.

Lots and lots of castles.

Linda Sees Another Castle

I have a tendency when driving to want to get to the destination.

I know how long the trip is supposed to take, and there’s something satisfying about arriving on schedule.

Or better yet, beating the schedule.

As a man, I want to conquer the drive and get there faster than any other man has ever done it.

I realize that’s a ridiculous accomplishment to pursue.

But there you have it.

Linda, on the other hand, has a different relationship with the journey.

Especially when there’s a castle involved.

We’d be making our way toward Killarney, staying on the main roads for obvious reasons, when another castle would appear along the way.

And Linda HAD to see it.

Now, normally, my competitive driving instincts might start calculating how much time this little detour was going to cost us.

But we were in Ireland.

We had come to see Ireland.

And what else were we going to do?

So I was very gracious about allowing the meandering of the day.

Very gracious.

The drive became part of our sightseeing, rather than simply the time between attractions.

And it helped that we weren’t strangers to spending long days in a car together.

By the time we reached Killarney, we were ready for the next adventure.

But this time, I wasn’t going to drive.

Sometimes the Bus Wins

We were in Killarney to experience the famous Ring of Kerry.

The Ring of Kerry is a scenic loop of about 179 kilometers around the Iveragh Peninsula, with mountains, lakes, coastline, little villages, and beautiful countryside.

It’s one of Ireland’s most famous driving routes.

And we were absolutely NOT driving it ourselves.

Not because I couldn’t.

By this point, I was getting reasonably good at driving on the left.

But I wanted to SEE the Ring of Kerry.

I didn’t want to hear Linda giving me a play-by-play of all the beautiful scenery while I concentrated on keeping our little rental car between a stone wall and an oncoming bus.

I’d already experienced enough of that.

So we booked a bus tour.

Yes.

The same two people who rented a car because they wanted to travel independently voluntarily climbed aboard a bus.

And it was one of the best decisions we made.

I could sit back, look out the window, enjoy the scenery, and let somebody else worry about the road.

We made stops at the major attractions included on our tour.

But one stop stood out above all the others.

And it wasn’t a castle.

Kells Sheepdogs: The Unexpected Star of the Ring of Kerry

I don’t know what you picture when somebody tells you that one of the highlights of their Ireland trip was watching a sheepdog demonstration.

But stick with me.

We stopped at Kells Sheepdogs, where we watched working sheepdogs demonstrate what they do on an Irish sheep farm.

And it was fascinating.

The handler did a wonderful job explaining the sheep, the dogs, and the relationship between them.

Then he showed us how it all worked.

Using whistles and hand movements, he directed the dogs as they moved the sheep around the hillside.

And those dogs knew exactly what they were doing.

It wasn’t just a bunch of dogs running around chasing sheep.

They were working.

You could see their training, their instincts, and the connection they had with their handler.

He would give a command, and the dogs would respond.

Sometimes it was a whistle.

Sometimes a hand movement.

And the sheep would move in response to the dogs.

What amazed us was how much the handler could accomplish through those signals.

We weren’t simply watching an entertaining animal demonstration.

We were learning about a way of life and a skill that has been part of farming in Ireland for generations.

That’s one of the things we love about travel.

Sometimes you visit a famous landmark and enjoy it exactly as much as you expected.

Other times, you stop somewhere you hadn’t given much thought to and discover one of your favorite experiences of the trip.

For us, Kells Sheepdogs was one of those places.

Educational.

Entertaining.

And absolutely worth the stop.

The Ring of Kerry Is Apparently a Semi-Ring

Now, I have a little observation about the Ring of Kerry.

It’s called a ring.

And geographically, yes, it’s a complete loop.

But from our experience, it’s more like a semi-ring.

Because once you’ve made it about halfway around, it’s time for a nap.

We’d seen beautiful scenery, enjoyed the attractions, and had a wonderful time watching the sheepdogs.

By that point, I was pretty content to let the bus do its thing.

And there was still one form of entertainment available.

Watching the bus driver negotiate those narrow Irish roads.

Here’s a tip.

Sit near the front of the bus.

You get to see the road from the driver’s perspective.

And after driving those roads myself, I found that particularly entertaining.

Here comes another car around a bend.

And here’s our bus, which occupies approximately the entire road.

Now I got to watch how the other drivers reacted.

It was the same situation I’d been dealing with in our rental car.

Only this time, I wasn’t responsible for getting us through it.

I could just sit back and enjoy the show.

I had come to an important conclusion about Irish bus drivers.

They don’t THINK they own the road.

They KNOW they own the road.

Their buses are the same size as the road.

There isn’t any left for the rest of us.

After a full day of traveling and sightseeing, we spent the night at an Airbnb near the Ring of Kerry.

And the next morning?

Another three-hour drive.

Day 3: Three Hours to the Cliffs of Moher

Our next adventure would take us north to one of Ireland’s most famous natural attractions.

The Cliffs of Moher.

And once again, we weren’t interested in simply looking at them from the usual perspective.

We wanted to see them from the water.

So we’d booked a boat excursion.

When we got up that morning, the weather wasn’t exactly cooperating.

It was cold.

And rainy.

And foggy.

Ireland.

Our voyage was delayed because of the weather, which is a good reminder that you don’t get to control everything about your travel itinerary.

Especially when the Atlantic Ocean is involved.

We were fortunate that our plans allowed us to work around the delay.

This was NOT the day to have back-to-back excursions scheduled.

Eventually, we were able to board.

And that’s when things got interesting.

The Cliffs of Moher: Barf Bags Were Complimentary

We encountered roughly 30-knot winds and seas reportedly running seven to ten feet.

Barf bags were being handed out like complimentary snacks.

The people who had rushed to get the best seats with the best views were rewarded with a continuous supply of saltwater spray.

Luxury.

And we weren’t even sure we’d see the cliffs.

The fog was so thick when we left that we wondered if we’d spend the entire boat ride bouncing around in the Atlantic looking at absolutely nothing.

But we’d booked the excursion, we were aboard, and we were going to see what happened.

Then, as we approached the cliffs, something incredible happened.

The fog began to lift.

Sunlight broke through.

And suddenly, there they were.

The Cliffs of Moher rising dramatically out of the Atlantic Ocean.

Massive.

Beautiful.

Absolutely breathtaking.

For a moment, the rough seas and the uncertainty of whether we’d see anything seemed to disappear.

We were looking up at these enormous cliffs from the water, with sunlight breaking through the clouds.

It was one of those travel moments you don’t forget.

And it was worth every minute of the rough ride.

Well, at least for us.

I’m not sure everybody holding one of those barf bags would agree.

Our Third Night: Lisdoonvarna

After our Cliffs of Moher adventure, we spent the night in Lisdoonvarna, County Clare.

Lisdoonvarna is an interesting little town with quite a history.

It’s a spa town, historically known for its mineral waters and the people who traveled there to experience them.

But it has another claim to fame.

Matchmaking.

Yes, matchmaking.

Lisdoonvarna is famous for its matchmaking festival, a tradition that developed from the town’s popularity as a place for visitors to gather, socialize, and perhaps find a little romance.

The festival is traditionally held in September and features music, dancing, and social events.

Now, Linda and I didn’t need a matchmaker.

We met singing karaoke in a bar, eloped eight weeks later, and THEN met each other’s parents.

I guess that’s one way to eliminate the middleman.

We didn’t attend the festival, but learning about the town’s history was one more reminder that the places we stayed had stories of their own.

Lisdoonvarna was our last overnight stop before turning east toward Dublin.

And after three days of driving, sightseeing, and excursions, we were ready for a change of pace.

Because we had one more special place planned.

And this one wasn’t about doing more.

It was about doing a little less.

Day 4: Three Hours to Killeen Castle

I’ve noticed something about the way Linda and I travel.

We seem to have developed a habit of staying somewhere especially nice at the end of a trip.

I don’t know that we ever officially decided to make that a tradition.

But here we were again.

For our final night in Ireland, we’d chosen Killeen Castle, a beautiful estate in County Meath, approximately 30 minutes from Dublin Airport.

Another three-hour drive brought us to the property.

But this time, there was no major tour scheduled.

No bus ride.

No boat ride.

No chasing down another attraction before closing time.

Just an opportunity to enjoy where we were.

And what a property.

When we visited, the estate was still being developed, and the castle itself was undergoing renovations for residences.

The grounds were gorgeous and expansive.

Walking trails wound through the property, giving us an opportunity to explore without having to get back into the car.

And that’s exactly what we needed.

After days of driving, sightseeing, touring, and doing, doing, doing, it was wonderful to simply walk.

No schedule.

No next destination.

No need to be somewhere at a certain time.

Just the peaceful grounds of a beautiful Irish estate.

It was a wonderful respite.

And a perfect way to finish our trip.

There’s something to be said for ending a busy adventure with a little room to enjoy everything you’ve experienced.

We’d spent four days exploring Ireland at a pretty ambitious pace.

And now we could slow down.

By this point, I was also considerably more comfortable driving on the left.

Linda didn’t have to provide nearly as many emergency announcements.

And the wider roads approaching Dublin were a welcome change from some of the narrow country roads we’d experienced.

We’d made our loop.

We’d seen castles, countryside, sheepdogs, cliffs, little towns, and historic places.

And we were happy to spend our final evening doing absolutely nothing that required a ticket.

Explore Killeen Castle

One Last Ireland Driving Tip: The M50 Toll

Before we leave our Ireland road trip behind, there’s one practical detail worth mentioning.

The M50 motorway around Dublin uses a barrier-free toll system on a section of the road.

That means there isn’t a traditional tollbooth where you stop, hand somebody money, and continue on your way.

Instead, cameras record your vehicle’s registration.

When we traveled, I appreciated being able to reach our accommodations, connect to the internet, and pay the toll online.

Pretty convenient.

If you’re renting a car today, check whether the rental company handles M50 toll charges automatically or whether you’re responsible for paying them yourself.

If you’re responsible, payment must be made by 8 p.m. the following day to avoid penalties.

You can find the details at eFlow, the M50 toll operator.

Just one of those little things that’s nice to know before you find yourself wondering why you never saw a tollbooth.

Four Nights in Ireland. And We Never Saw Dublin.

We returned our rental car at Dublin Airport with plenty of memories and exactly zero sightseeing stops in Dublin.

But we wouldn’t trade the Ireland we experienced for the places we missed.

Would we go back?

In a heartbeat.

And next time, maybe we’ll even see Dublin.

Unless Linda spots another castle along the way.

That’s it. Don’t try to see everything. See what matters to you.

And remember…

LEFT IS YOUR FRIEND!

Thanks for coming along for the ride
Matt & Linda

See more places we’ve actually traveled → Destinations