Luxury Vacations in Ireland

Glinting like a rough emerald on Europe’s western frontier, Ireland unfolds through dragon-spine mountains and ancient forests, each county home to legends as epic as the landscape that surround it.

Dublin is particularly thick with stories, and proudly maps the nation’s road to independence through monuments of its distinguished writers and revolutionaries. But the pulse of any city, from Limerick to Galway, can be taken in its pubs, where folk music and good ‘craic’ flow as freely as frothy pints of Guinness and amber-hued drams of whiskey. To the west, the untamed Atlantic coastline splinters through peninsulas and islets seemingly indifferent to the passage of time. It can be explored on the Wild Atlantic Way, a 1,600-mile touring route from Donegal to Cork that takes in the soul-stirring Cliffs of Moher and the humbling ruins on Skellig Michael, a Unesco site reached only by venturing with local skippers through choppy, dolphin-rich waters. Ireland’s ancient, spiritual roots are on full display in the east, along the Irish Sea: Glendalough’s great valley shrouds the ruins of a sixth-century monastic city, while the vast tomb at Newgrange, designed by Neolithic architects to be illuminated on the winter solstice, is older that the pyramids. Abbeys, grand estates and castles fleck this landscape, some transformed into grand hotels, others left as ruins. Among the most romantic is Blarney Castle, a pilgrimage site for travellers wishing to kiss the Blarney Stone and take home the Irish "gift of the gab". The whole country is a Celtic Ballad; to explore it is to bring it to life.