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.
Don't just take our word for it; see what travelers are saying at lonelyplanet.com

I am a student who spent the summer of 1999 traveling through Europe and spring 2000 in ireland. I did read a number of other books before and durring the trip, and will always buy Lonely Planet as they have impressed me as being the best, hands down. If you want to go on a drunken tour, buy Let's Go and end up in the same run down American hostels and American bars as the rest of the American students, but take my word, you will have enough ability to do that with LP, but you will not be forced to either. LP will help you to actually experience the culture, and take in a more European version of Europe than Let's Go, and still give you the opportunity to party like a rock star when you want - its up to you.

It is the most complete and most versitile book I have found. It will cater to budget and intermediate travelers of all ages and groups. I will buy the same series even when I can afford nice resturants and hotels, because LP tells it all.

The same experience is true for my trip this last spring to Ireland. Lonely Planet Ireland is as good as Western Europe, but more detailed.The Lonely Planet guide book series is by far the best set of books I have found for travel. Let's Go, Rough Guide, Frommer's, etc do not live up to these books. LP offers a great blend of interesting facts (history, etc) with the travel information that we all really want.

I am a student who spent the summer of 1999 traveling through Europe - poor, but free. I did read a number of other books before and durring the trip, and will always buy Lonely Planet as they have impressed me as being the best, hands down. If you want to go on a drunken tour, buy Let's Go and end up in the same run down American hostels and American bars as the rest of the American students, but take my word, you will have enough ability to do that with LP, but you will not be forced to either. LP will help you to actually experience the culture, and take in a more European version of Europe than Let's Go, and still give you the opportunity to party like a rock star when you want - its up to you.

It is the most complete and most versitile book I have found. It will cater to budget and intermediate travelers of all ages and groups. I will buy the same series even when I can afford nice resturants and hotels, because LP tells it all.


Hands Down Winner   January 5, 2000
38 out of 39 found this review helpful

On my first trip to Ireland I brought 10 travel books with me. On my second trip to Ireland I only brought the Lonely Planet. This book is the definitive guide! No matter where I was in Ireland, this book had everything I needed and more.


Mixed feelings   October 3, 2005
Steven D. Lydick (Grand Island, NE United States)
27 out of 29 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!


Another good Lonely Planet guide   December 12, 2001
RM (San Diego, CA USA)
24 out of 24 found this review helpful

As with many other countries, Lonely Planet has a very good guide for Ireland. Every city, town, and village are covered in this book. No matter where we were, we could always find something on the location. The index is wonderfully useful for that purpose. There are also some suggested itineraries. My only criticism is that LP seems to have missed many of the excellent guesthouses in Ireland. I would think this should be LP's speciality, so found this aspect disappointing. Still, I would not leave home without LP, on this trip or any other for that matter. Even if you don't want to go the budget route --something many associate with LP -- you will gain from the descriptions of places, restaurant and pub recommendations, maps, history, and more. And despite its reputation, LP does list high-end hotels, castles, and the like. I haven't found a single excellent guide for Ireland, so I suggest doing some internet research before leaving and taking LP and at least one other guide (I like the Blue Guide series).

Bon voyage!!