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Dublin to Galway Luxury Private Chauffeur Guide Tour
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From €900 per person
Rather than a straight drive from Dublin to Galway, this private tour turns the journey into a proper day out. You’re picked up at your hotel in Dublin and head west with two stops worth building your day around.
The first is Newgrange in the Boyne Valley, Co. Meath - a passage tomb dating back to around 3200 BC, which makes it older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. You’ll get a guided tour of this UNESCO World Heritage Site before heading further west.
The second stop is Sean’s Bar in Athlone, widely recognised as Ireland’s oldest pub, for a break and a drink if you fancy one. From there it’s a straightforward run west to Galway City on the Atlantic coast, arriving with the day well spent.
Athlone sits at the narrowest crossing point of the Shannon, right in the middle of Ireland, and Sean’s Bar is the centrepiece of the old west bank. Guinness World Records gave it the title of oldest pub in Ireland in 2004, with a claimed founding around 900 AD. When the building was rebuilt in 1970, wattle-and-wicker walls and a clutch of 17th-century coins turned up - the National Museum took the coins. The bar pours a decent pint and doesn’t need the story to justify itself. Your 35-minute stop is enough for one drink and a look around the room.
If you arrive into Athlone with a few minutes to spare, the Norman castle is a three-minute walk from Sean’s Bar on the same west bank - a squat grey fortress that has been rebuilt, blown up, and rebuilt again since 1210. The castle exterior tells the whole story of why every invader in Irish history came through this crossing first.
When you arrive in Galway, the medieval core around Shop Street and Quay Street is your starting point. The city is walkable in thirty minutes end-to-end - but a long evening in the laneways, dinner at Ard Bia at Nimmo on Quay Street, and a session at Tigh Coili or Crane Bar will take care of the rest of the day properly. Both pubs run genuine trad nights, not tourist-facing sessions, starting around nine or ten.
Newgrange entrance tickets are allocated in advance through the Brú na Bóinne Visitor Centre booking system - your guide will have this covered, but if you’re planning independently on another day, book well ahead. The site is one of the best-preserved prehistoric buildings in Europe and the guided tour is the only way to enter.