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3-Day West Coast Explorer from Dublin Including Admission
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From €855 per person
Sea cliffs, ancient monasteries, peat bogs, and the kind of pubs that still feel genuinely local. This three-day small-group tour covers the highlights of Ireland’s dramatic West Coast, staying overnight in Galway. You’ll start each morning with a full breakfast before heading out with your driver-guide through some of the most striking scenery in the country.
Along the way you’ll wind through peat bogs, sample whiskey from one of the oldest legal distilleries in the world, walk the Cliffs of Moher with your entry ticket already sorted, and take in medieval castles and monasteries. The group stays small at a maximum of 16 passengers, so you get proper time at each stop and room to ask the questions a bigger bus wouldn’t allow.
Meeting point: Opposite the Kilkenny Shop, Nassau St, Dublin
The Cliffs of Moher are genuinely best in the morning. The site gets busy from late morning onward, and the coach-tour arrivals peak between 11am and 2pm. Your driver-guide will have the timing well handled, but if there’s any flexibility built into the day, earlier is always better. The southern end of the cliff path, toward Hag’s Head, is where most people don’t go - and the view back north along the full cliff face from down there is worth the extra walk.
In Galway, the medieval core rewards getting properly lost. Shop Street down to Quay Street, then left at random until you’ve run out of laneways. The city is small enough that you can’t actually lose yourself for long, but it’s dense enough to keep surprising you. After dinner, finding a trad session is easier than it sounds: both Tigh Coili and the Crane Bar run music most nights, starting around half nine. These aren’t arranged performances for visitors - the standard is high because the musicians want to play.
For food in Galway, Ard Bia at Nimmo’s on Quay Street is the right call for a proper dinner. It’s a locally-led menu that shifts with what’s in season, the kind of place people remember months later. If you want something more relaxed, the Gourmet Tart Company does coffee and hand pies at counter seating and the queues move fast. Both are central and neither requires a long wait if you time it right.
The Salthill Promenade is the walk Galway people do when they need to think. It runs two kilometres west from the city along the bay, past Victorian terraces and seafront benches, to a pier at the end where the old tradition is to kick the wall before turning back. Flat, by the water, and a complete contrast to the lanes of the city centre. The ice cream spot at the end has been there longer than most things in the city.
If you have time before or after the tour, the Aran Islands are the obvious extension. The ferry leaves from Rossaveal, about 40 minutes west of Galway. Inis Mór is worth a full day on its own - Dún Aonghasa, the fort on the cliff edge, is one of the genuinely great ancient sites in Ireland. It’s not part of this tour, but it’s right there if you’re building extra days around the trip.