Witty & welcoming i Good 'Craic' I coasts to castles i ireland offers
BACK TO THE TOP
BACK TO THE TOP
In collaboration with
Witty and welcoming
Ireland is justifably famous for the warmth with which locals extend their welcome to visitors. The Irish are witty, keen to strike up conversation and great fun to be around. A playful spirit and quirky charm are hallmarks of the Irish sensibility.
In fact, last year readers of Condé Nast Traveller ranked Ireland as the friendliest country in Europe. The big (and big-hearted) personalities you’ll meet on a trip to Ireland are a major part of what makes it an unforgettable experience.
Ireland is also nation of storytellers—or Seanchai (shan-key), as they're known in Ireland—and that extends through every part of life, from film-making, literature, telling a yarn down the pub or simply cracking jokes.
Witty, warmand welcoming
The Emerald Isle
BACK TO THE TOP
Lorem ipsum
Lorem ipsum
BACK TO THE TOP
Ireland is more than a destination; it’s a feeling.
Ask anyone who has made the journey and they’ll tell you: Ireland has a soul-stirring effect. You'll notice it whether hiking across towering sea cliffs, conversing with locals in a rousing village pub, enjoying cultural pastimes at festivals or staying a few nights in a grand castle. Best of all, you'll bring that feeling home with you, along with your holiday souvenirs.
With nonstop flights shorter than those to most European destinations (about 6.5 hours from Toronto), you don’t have to go as far as you think to fill your heart with Ireland.
Plan your trip
Along your travels in Ireland you’ll find no shortage of guided walking tours. Guides are experienced locals, not to mention seasoned storytellers, who impart their knowledge with good humour and local colour. A walking tour is a great way to explore the Dublin, and visitors have lots of options to experience it like a local. Pat Liddy’s Walking Tours employs almost a dozen guides, including Pat Liddy himself, a Dublin native and author and illustrator of books on the city.
On Northern Ireland’s coastline, a walking tour with Away A Wee Walk will get you up close and personal with Giant’s Causeway, an epic sight with 40,000 or so of hexagon-shaped interlocking stones that lead from the cliff foot to below the sea. The stones date back to the volcanic age 60 million years ago.
Character encounters
Arrive prepared to laugh. “Irish people are the funniest in the world,” says Sharon Horgan, the Irish actress and writer behind TV shows Bad Sisters and Catastrophe. “I think the reason I see comedy in everything is because I was surrounded by it growing up.”
Many pubs host comedy nights. Dublin’s family-run Ha’Penny Bridge Inn leaves patrons in stitches three nights a week, and laughter can also be heard at Cleere’s Bar & Theatre, in County Kilkenny, where a 100-seat venue brings a variety of comedy and musical acts. Enjoy some of Ireland’s funniest personalities at the Galway Comedy Festival in October. Ireland’s largest comedy festival, it staged 45 shows and featured more than 80 performers last year. Expect the return for a third straight year of the critically acclaimed Faulty Towers The Dining Experience, a homage to the classic BBC sitcom.
Join the laughter
Good ‘craic’
Follow the music
Festivals aside, good craic can be had virtually anywhere Irish people congregate together. Follow the sounds of fiddles and toe-tapping to a “music pub,” like Peadar O’Donnell’s in Derry-Londonderry, where its famed call, uilleann pipes (the national bagpipe of Ireland), spills onto the narrow streets and draws local crowds every night. Named the People’s Choice at the Bar of the Year Awards last year, Dolan’s Pub in Limerick City features five music venues, and includes a free live traditional Irish music session every Friday and Saturday night.
From Westport in County Mayo, with its music sessions, to Cushendall in County Antrim, with its stirring scene that takes in everything from karaoke to folk singing, you’re bound to find a good time.
For an authentic experience of traditional Irish music, don’t miss the Fleadh Cheoil, a music gathering taking place in Mullingar from Aug. 6-14.
Festivals galore
There are many hundreds of festivals across Ireland all year long. And for good reason: they’re where locals can count on craic to be had! Ireland’s biggest festival of traditional Irish music, TradFest, takes place every January in Temple Bar. It features folk, jazz and even some hip-hop with over 50 live concerts.
Every March, communities from Belfast to Cork celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Dublin honours the fifth-century patron saint with St. Patrick’s Festival, which includes music, dance, comedy and circus performances and its world-famous National St. Patrick’s Day Parade. In County Armagh in Northern Ireland, where St. Patrick founded his main church on the “sweet little hill” of Armagh (now home to St. Patrick’s Cathedral), expect a parade, song and dance, lectures and arts and crafts.
The Gaelic word “craic," is pronounced like the word “crack,” and in the strictest sense it translates to “fun, “news” or “gossip.” These days, it describes a joyful feeling, an atmosphere, an energy. And “craic” is almost always shared. There is also a free-spirited element to it, which feels very Irish.
Colin Farrell, for instance, described being nominated for an Academy Award as “a bit of craic.” You can hear friends greet each other on the streets with the phrase, “Where’s the craic?” It’s like asking, “Where are the good times at?”
It’s having a lively, crackling conversation. A spontaneous night out at the pub with the Guinness flowing, music playing and patrons laughing. Breaking into an impromptu singalong at a music festival. All good craic.
Coasts to Castles
There’s so much for the senses in Dublin, but it’s worth a hop on the Dart (train) to Dublin Bay, where pretty villages are full of history, fantastic food and great craic.
Thirty minutes from Dublin City Centre is Dun Laoghaire, which has bustling boardwalks, charming cafes and shops. The landscaped oasis of People’s Park offers fountains, a children’s playground, colourful gardens and a Sunday market with local vendors.
With the mighty peaks of the Mourne Mountains as a backdrop, Newcastle boasts a busy harbour, cafes and bars. Don’t miss the Murlough National Nature Reserve, a centuries-old sand dune ecosystem with woodlands, beaches, boardwalks and plenty of bird- and butterfly-watching.
Seaside Escapes
As wildly rugged as the coastline is, beach-going is a favourite way for locals to relax. If you fancy long beach walks, County Donegal, the most northern point on the Wild Atlantic Way, has several options. Backed by sand dunes, Ballyhiernan Beach is a popular spot for surfers. Over half a mile long, Kilahoey Beach is sandy, safe for swimming and in the summer months has lifeguards on duty.
The longest beach in Ireland is Curracloe Strand in County Wexford, which stretches about 11 kilometres from Raven Point to Ballyconigar. Its sweeping white sands have been featured in movies including Brooklyn and Saving Private Ryan.
Life’s a beach
To take in where Ireland meets the Atlantic Ocean, consider a coastal odyssey. In the island’s Ancient East, begin in the town of Cobh and end in Bray, in County Wicklow, which is often called the Gateway to the Garden of Ireland. The Wild Atlantic Way is the world’s longest defined coastal touring route, a 2,500 kilometre journey that takes you from the wind-whipped tip of Malin Head in County Donegal to the balmy beauty of Kinsale in County Cook.
Clinging to Ireland’s rugged northern coastline, the Causeway Coastal Route between Belfast and Derry-Londonderry, features vast ocean views, rolling green valleys and butter-coloured coves. If you venture across the rope bridge linking Carrick Island and the County Antrim that sways 30 metres above the ocean, you’ll be rewarded with views of Rathlin Island and even Scotland!
Coastal cravings
Ireland is home to about 3,200 kilometres of coastline. It’s rugged, soaring and wildly beautiful, with sheer cliffs that plunge into the crashing waves of the Atlantic Ocean. And yet it’s simultaneously peaceful and meditative, with hiking trails and walks and golden beaches that stretch for miles.
The Irish landscape is also dotted with castles that are like time capsules to another century. Looming over medieval towns and clinging to wave-based cliffsides, castles have long been a historic feature of the Irish landscape, with some 3,000 of the fortified and towered structures. You can visit them for an afternoon – but read on to find out how to spend a night or two behind their historic walls.
Photograph by Marc Piscotty
Photograph by Marc Piscotty
Lorem ipsum
Lorem ipsum
Lorem ipsum
Photograph by Scott Dressell Martin
Photograph by Scott Dressell Martin
Many castles in Ireland have been converted into five-star castle hotels. Guests at Ashford Castle (named the Top Resort in Europe in the 2022 Conde Nast Traveller’s Awards) can be catered to with gourmet dining and luxurious furnishings, like four-poster beds, antique furniture and spiral staircases.
If you’re looking for something more rustic, drive to County Tipperary and book a room at the Gaelic Black Castle, named for the dark ivy that once covered the building. To recreate the experience of a 16-century castle, there is no electricity. But the bedding is unmistakably luxurious: a bespoke king-sized bed with Egyptian cotton sheets. There also castles where guests can rub shoulders with the owners. The Master of Wilton Castle, delights in sharing stories with visitors; while the 7th Earl of Erne has opened the doors of County Fermanagh’s Crom Castle.
Castle Stays
Fill your heart with Ireland
Ireland has been the birthplace and home of literary giants from Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde and James Joyce to Seamus Heaney, Maeve Binchy and Sally Rooney.
On the West Coast, hop aboard the all-weather Rose of Innisfree tour boat to Lough (Lake) Gill, where W.B. Yeats immortalized the Lake Isle of Innisfree. Or visit the still-standing pubs frequented by these great wordsmiths, like Dublin’s The Brazen Head. Laying claim as Ireland’s oldest pub, the site has had a liquor license since 1198. Swift was a regular—and the satirist was said to be very particular about his beer! Joyce name-checked it in 1922’s Ulysses: “you got a decent enough do in the Brazen Head for a bob.”
Star power
Step into the world of some of your favourite movie and TV characters by visiting locations where some of the scenes were set.
2023 Academy Award Best Picture nominee Banshees of Inisherin brought to life a fictional island through real-life filming locations in Ireland. They include horseshoe-shaped Keem Bay, off the west coast of Achill Island, where the white sand beach was singled out by Lonely Planet as “one of Europe’s most beautiful spots.”
Derry Girls fans can delight in a tour of the comedy series’ filming locations in the walled city of Derry-Londonderry, including Dennis’s Wee Shop and Pump Street. You can even see Erin and the gang immortalized with a bright mural on the side of Badger’s Bar on Orchard Street!
Stealing the scene
Photograph by Marc Piscotty
Photograph by Marc Piscotty
Lorem ipsum
In partnership with Fill Your Heart with Ireland
2023 Academy Award Best Picture nominee Banshees of Inisherin brought to life a fictional island through real-life filming locations in Ireland. They include horseshoe-shaped Keem Bay, off the west coast of mountain-marked Achill Island, where the white sand beach was singled out by Lonely Planet as “one of Europe’s most beautiful spots.”
If you’re a fan of the world’s best-known wizarding student, you’ll want to check out the Cliffs of Moher, featured in an iconic scene between Harry and Dumbledore in the film adaptation of Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince. With the cliffs standing at 702 feet above the crashing Atlantic Ocean, the filmmakers didn’t need CGI to create this stunning backdrop!
Game of Thrones devotees will remember when Jon Snow came face-to-face with one of the dragons belonging to Daenerys Targaryen on a breathtaking clifftop. The scene was filmed on the cliffs of Fair Head near Ballycastle in Northern Ireland. Themed tours will take you there as well as other filming locations of the hit HBO series based on George R.R. Martins best-selling book series. Plus, the Game of Thrones Studio Tour in Banbridge features original props, sets and costumes from the show.
Derry Girls fans can delight in a tour of the comedy series’ filming locations in the walled city of Derry-Londonderry, including Dennis’s Wee Shop and Pump Street. You can even see Erin and the gang immortalized with a bright mural on the side of Badger’s Bar on Orchard Street!
Coast-to-coast craic
If you’re looking for an excuse to dress up in flouncy dresses or top hats, July kicks off the Galway Races, a horse-racing festival that brings a carnival atmosphere to the bohemian city.
Great fun being scared can be had at the Púca Festival in County Meath. Ireland is the birthplace of Halloween —originating from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain —and Derry hosts Europe’s biggest Halloween festival from Oct. 28-31.
In December, you can also find craic at any number of Christmas markets. The Belfast Continental Christmas market features festive cuisine from around the world, while Christmas at Limerick’s Milk Market overflows with yuletide cheer as choirs and carollers provide a festive soundtrack.
Video Placeholder
Lorem ipsum
Lorem ipsum
Photograph by Ken Cheung
In partnership with Fill Your Heart with Ireland
In partnership with Fill Your Heart with Ireland