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Private Day Trip to Cliffs of Moher & Galway from Dublin
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From €670 per person
Ireland’s west coast is one of those places that earns every bit of its reputation - and this private 12-hour day trip from Dublin gives you a full day to take it in properly. You’ll travel in a spacious, air-conditioned vehicle with your own English-speaking driver, hotel pickup, Wi-Fi, and bottled water.
The Cliffs of Moher are the centrepiece - stretching over 8 kilometres and rising more than 200 metres above the Atlantic, they’re as dramatic in person as you’d hope. You’ll have 4 hours here, enough time to walk the clifftop paths, find a quiet spot away from the main viewing areas, and just stand there for a while. Next is the Burren, a vast limestone region that doesn’t look much like the rest of Ireland at all - cracked pale stone, rare wildflowers, and ancient archaeological sites, with short stops along the way to get a proper look. The day ends in Galway, where you’ve got free time to explore the Latin Quarter, listen to street performers, or grab lunch near the Spanish Arch before the drive back to Dublin.
You can extend your time at any stop directly through the app if you’d like more flexibility.
At the Cliffs of Moher, the main viewing area around O’Brien’s Tower tends to concentrate the crowds. If you walk north along the clifftop path toward Doolin, the numbers thin out within ten minutes and the views are just as good. With four hours here you have real time to find the quieter stretches - worth asking your driver which direction to head first.
From the southern end of the cliffs near Liscannor, the Hag’s Head clifftop trail runs 5 km up to the visitor centre with no entry fee and no turnstile. Liscannor is also where the Liscannor slate was quarried - the dark fossil-marked stone that paves courtyards across Munster and lines the platforms at Galway station. Vaughan’s Anchor Inn on the main street has been run by the same family since 1979 and does seriously good seafood if you want a meal away from the visitor-centre crowds.
When you reach Galway for the afternoon segment, the medieval core is compact enough to cover on foot in a couple of hours. The best approach is to start at Eyre Square and work your way down through the laneways toward the Spanish Arch and the Claddagh. Quay Street has most of the food options - Ard Bia at Nimmo on the quay is locally-led and uses market produce; Gourmet Tart Company near Shop Street is the quick option for hand pies and good coffee. If you end up with an hour to spare, the Crane Bar is a three-storey pub with trad sessions most nights - though on a day trip the afternoon sessions are the ones to aim for.
For the Burren section, the site is enormous and the driver will know the best pull-in points. The limestone pavements look barren at first glance but look closely and you’ll find rare wildflowers growing in the cracks - the area has over 700 plant species, including orchids and Mediterranean plants that have no business being this far north. The N67 along the bay through Ballyvaughan is one of the best approaches to the Burren - the village sits where the limestone meets the water, with Monk’s Pub on the pier doing a seafood chowder worth stopping for. Ten minutes south on the Corkscrew Hill road and you’re into Lisdoonvarna, the spa town at the Burren edge where four naturally warm mineral springs still come up out of the rock.
Timing matters for this route: if Galway is the last stop before the drive home, arriving around 4pm gives you a couple of hours in the city before the evening traffic builds on the M6 back to Dublin.