Legends and Landscapes of Ireland

Welcome to the soul of the nation, a place of thumping live music and Georgian hotels, of pubs, parks and the cobbled grandeur of Trinity College. Dublin’s story is an ongoing epic, one written by rebels, writers, saints and sinners, from its Bronze Age beginnings to the bitter road to independence. Gaze into the waters of the Liffey, as Joyce or Wilde might have done, and contemplate the next chapter, or mull it over with a Guinness or two in the legendary Temple Bar.

With cosmopolitan shopping streets and the grand St Fin Barre’s Cathedral soaring over the banks of the Lee, it is little wonder the Corkonians insist their city is Ireland’s true capital. Wander the riverside quays and stalls of fresh produce at the English Market and make up your own mind, before discovering colorful townhouses of Cobh, or the iconic Blarney Castle: kiss its storied stone and be blessed, they say, with the gift of the gab. 

Clawing into the Atlantic, Kerry is Ireland at its wildest and most emblematic, an emerald-green land where cliffs crumble into slate-blue seas and deserted beaches wait down country lanes. Pick a peninsula – Beara, Dingle or Iveagh – and drive, taking winding coastal roads from rocky bays to charming, chocolate-box towns, stopping to explore rural outposts of ancient Gaelic culture and feel the salt-tinged wind as it dances over the hills.

Ruined abbeys, barren moorland and mysterious Neolithic dolmens: Clare is a lilting song of mythical landscapes. There is the Burren, a vast expanse of heather-speckled karst rock, in whose mossy crevices fossils have been unearthed. And all along the coast, lighthouses cling to rocky headlands, from Loop Head to the Cliffs of Moher, where the haunting cries of seabirds ride on the wild Atlantic waves.