Ireland (Country Guide)

From pub-hopping and leprechaun-chasing to Ogham stones and the Book of Kells, Lonely Planet presents the essential Ireland. In addition to the requisite lowdown on food and accommodations, a detailed activities section covers everything from walking and birdwatching to hang gliding and rock climbing. The book's intriguing "boxed asides" delve into topics ranging from the mystical to the environmental, including the witch of Kilkenny, the legend of Inishbofin Island, the Birr Observatory and Telescope, even Ireland's disappearing bogs. --Kathryn True

Product Description
Discover Ireland

Hear nothing but wind over stone walls as you walk the edge of the continent on Inisheer.
Taste Ireland's natural bounty as you feast on local produce in Kinsale.
Trade banter with your driver on a black-taxi tour of the political murals of West Belfast.
Tap your toes and raise your glass to a traditional music session in Doolin and Kilfenora.

In This Guide:

Seven authors, over 200 days of research, countless gallons of the black stuff consumed.
Interviews with celebrity chefs, mural artists and fiddlers.

Bon voyage!!


Mixed feelings   October 3, 2005
Steven D. Lydick (Grand Island, NE United States)
36 out of 38 found this review helpful

I've used the lonely planet guides on other trips before, and have always been very pleased, but this one left me with a different taste in my mouth. LP was the only guide we purchased, based on our previous experiences with them, but we had the chance to peruse others in the B&B's we stayed in throughout our trip. Of all of them, I'd rate the LP as the 2nd best for our interests - as they say, individual experiences may vary! Ireland has become a very expen$ive tourist destination, so upon reflection, we would have been happier with the Rough Guide. LP has just tried to hard to cover all levels of expense in one guide, and has ended up short-changing all of them in the process. I hate to say it, but I'd rather see them do one thing well than 3 things mediocre at best. I'd still put it above most of the other guidebooks though.

Our first and foremost gripe is how out of date the price estimates on everything are. I realize it was published two years ago, but we gradually learned to depend on everything costing about 20% more than LP listed. That's quite a jump for 2 years, indicating to me either poor fact-checking for the 2003 edition, or some pretty crazy inflation and a need for another update.

Our second gripe was the local maps. They failed to provide maps for a lot of the smaller cities, and only provided maps of the city-center areas in the larger ones. Given the rarity of Irish street signage, those maps would have been a God-send for navigation in towns. Also, and this may be a function of the 2003 printing, a lot of the towns in Ireland are instituting one-way patterns in their city-centers, and LP's maps rarely identified this.

A third, again related gripe is with the existance, or lack thereof, of the various restaurants, b&b's, shops, etc. listed in the guide. Probably 30% of the restaurants in the guide just aren't there any more. I realize they must have been when it went to print, but that didn't help us any.

Our last gripe is the rather uneven coverage of large areas of the country. Granted, it reflected perfectly the tourist patterns - heavy coverage of larger cities and popular tourist areas along the coasts, pretty awful coverage of less touristed interior areas. Unfortunately, we didn't just want to go where all the other tourists go, so this left our noses still further out of joint.

Overall, I'd say if you want a guide that covers the sightes well, both LP and Rough Guide do that. If you want to keep the expenditures down, Rough Guide does it much better. If you want to go all out, um, there's probably a third option, but neither of these two will do it well. If you want to be thrifty in some areas and splurge in others, then this guide is the closest you'll get to filling your schizophrenic needs in one place - although, in that case, I'd really recommend getting two guides, one for each end of the spectrum.

One last piece of advice - buy a heritage card when you get to your first castle/tomb/historic place! If you plan on visiting more than one or two historic places, its 20e cost will be recouped within days with all the free admissions it will get you for the rest of the trip!


Best of the bunch   October 22, 2002
P. Lozar (Santa Fe, NM USA)
19 out of 19 found this review helpful

I've made 2 trips to Ireland in the past 2 years. Before and between trips, I looked through a number of popular guides to Ireland, and both times this was the only one I actually took with me. It's thorough, the maps are accurate and helpful, the historical/cultural background sections are useful while not being overwhelming, and the restaurant descriptions are generally reliable. The listings of hotels and guesthouses aren't exhaustive, but those change constantly -- especially the B&B's -- and I felt that their general recommendations of what areas to stay in in a particular town were helpful. (I booked most of my accommodations through the Bord Failte, either online or in person, and was almost always pleased with the results.) The book is also good at pointing out less well-known sights -- e.g., the Hunt Museum in Limerick, which is worth a visit. A guidebook can't satisfy every reader equally, but this one did a good job of recommending activities for a variety of age groups, including families with children. Their descriptions of walks, how to get to historical sites in remote places, the alternatives to the standard Ring of Kerry tours, and even where to find a laundromat in Killarney, were VERY useful to me, and I definitely don't fall into the category of "young and trendy"!