My wife and I are headed to Ireland in October with our 20 year old daughter. I’ve been planning this trip since January when I first booked our flights (which I’ve since canceled and replaced with different flights).

I asked a few experienced travelers about the best route to take around southern Ireland, so that we could see as much as possible in the seven days and seven nights we have to explore. Obviously, Dublin is a must-see, plus Galway, the Cliffs of Moher and some of the amazing drives on the west coast (Dingle and Kerry). I also decided that Blarney Castle looks a bit overrated (and out of the way). I laid out a basic itinerary and then based on the map distance between places, I planned out where we would stop each night. I booked refundable hotels and Airbnb’s for all seven nights.

Today, I posted that itinerary on the TripAdvisor Ireland forum and asked for some feedback. I admitted that it was a bit rushed and ambitious and that I was not thrilled about getting the rental car on arrival into Dublin after a redeye in economy. Well, I got some great feedback. Most people told me that we should start off staying in Dublin and then rent the car to explore further so that I’m not driving on the left side of the road after little or no sleep. They also provided some good tips on which of the potential areas we could skip and/or replace with others that made more sense.

I often use TripAdvisor forums to research new locations. Not everything posted is helpful or relevant, but I find overall the level of information is good and the forum moderators do a good job weeding out spam and advertising pretty quickly. Each forum also has a destination expert (or several) who either live in the destination or have been there many times.

Over lunch at my desk today, I canceled all of the hotel (and rental car) bookings that I had previously created for this trip and rebooked our entire trip (minus the flights). Now, I feel like we will have a great week in Ireland with a bit more time to stop and smell the Guinness. I look forward to sharing the trip report after we take this trip in October. I will have more details about where we stayed and why.

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