Republic of Ireland

Ireland has a huge amount to offer the visitor, with astonishingly beautiful scenery, a fascinating Celtic heritage full of myths and legends,  a rich living culture, delightful cities and picturesque towns and villages.  Most important of all, there is the special quality of the Irish people who are famous for being friendly, sociable and great talkers with ‘the gift of the gab’. They love having fun and even  have a special term for  Irish fun – ‘the crack’.

Ireland’s only two large cities are Dublin, the capital, and Cork. Dublin  lies on Dublin Bay on the Irish Sea and is a top tourist destination with its elegant Georgian architecture, great sense of history, and superb restaurants, clubs and entertainment venues. Cork, built on an island in the River Lee,  is known as Ireland’s Venice, and is another  beautiful, cultured and lively city. Aside from these two main cities, the larger towns such as Limerick, Galway and Waterford, are well worth visiting.

Ireland has so many beauty spots it is impossible to list them. The West of Ireland is famous for its stunning coastline featuring dramatic cliffs and wild sandy beaches, and for its equally striking inland scenery. In the Northwest, County Sligo is notable  for its magnificent mountains, lakes, waterfalls and woodlands. The more lowlying interior of the country is less dramatic but has its own lush, green river-filled beauty, as well as the unique bogland areas traditionally used for peat extraction. Wherever you go, you will find enchanting harbour villages, beautiful country houses with gardens to visit, medieval castles, monasteries, Gothic cathedrals  and the highest number of prehistoric monuments in Europe.

Ireland offers wonderful opportunities for outdoor activities from walking, fishing and golf,  to surfing and kayaking. The country’s Celtic heritage is evident in the national love of music, art and literature. There is live music everywhere, both traditional and pop; Ireland after all produced artists such as U2, The Pogues, Boyzone, Westlife and The Corrs. The Nobel prize-winning writers W.B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney are all Irish, as are James Joyce and Oscar Wilde.

A visit to Ireland also offers the chance to enjoy Ireland’s many specialities in the area of food and drink. Local dishes include Irish stew, colcannon, champ, soda bread and superb seafood such as salmon, cod, prawns and oysters. Irish drink is probably even more famous, featuring Guinness, stout and Irish whisky.