Quick answer
Two bases, not three: two nights in Dublin and two or three in Galway. The single transfer between them is motorway almost the whole way, which is what makes five days work at all.
On this page
- 5 day Ireland itinerary at a glance
- Day 1 — Dublin on foot
- Day 2 — the harder history, and the brewery
- Day 3 — west to Galway
- Day 4 — Cliffs of Moher and the Burren
- Day 5 — Connemara, or go home
- The alternative: five days in the south-west
- What does not fit in five days
- Doing five days without a car
- What to book before you fly
- Driving notes for a short trip
- When to go, on a short trip
- Packing and weather, in five days
- Where to sleep on five days
- The mistake that ruins five-day trips
- Arriving and leaving
- If you only have a long weekend
- Frequently asked questions
Five days in Ireland is enough to see one region well or three regions badly. The arithmetic is simple: with arrival and departure taking most of two days, you have three usable days, and every change of base eats the middle of one of them.
Some links below are affiliate links. We may earn a commission if you book through them, at no extra cost to you. We do not rank hotels, and any prices on the map come live from the booking sites.
So this is a two-base route — Dublin and the west — with an alternative at the bottom for anyone whose reason for coming is Kerry rather than Galway. For the full picture of which bases cover what, see our Ireland itinerary.
5 day Ireland itinerary at a glance
| Day | Base | Doing |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dublin | Arrive, the old city on foot |
| 2 | Dublin | Kilmainham Gaol, Guinness Storehouse, music |
| 3 | Galway | Collect car, Clonmacnoise, evening in Galway |
| 4 | Galway | Cliffs of Moher and the Burren |
| 5 | — | Connemara, or fly home from Shannon |
Where to sleep on this route
Day 1 — Dublin on foot
Do not collect a car. Dublin is twenty-five minutes across on foot and central parking is expensive.
Trinity College and the Book of Kells first, then Grafton Street to St Stephen’s Green and the Georgian squares at Merrion and Fitzwilliam. The National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology is free and holds the bog bodies and Iron Age gold. Finish at Dublin Castle and Christ Church.
In the evening, walk through Temple Bar and drink one street away from it.
Day 2 — the harder history, and the brewery
Kilmainham Gaol in the morning. Book it before you fly — it is the one thing in Dublin that reliably sells out. The guided tour of the prison where the 1916 leaders were executed is the clearest hour of Irish history you will get.
The Guinness Storehouse is ten minutes away and fills the afternoon, ending at the top-floor bar with the city below. If beer is not the point, swap in EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum in the docklands.
Evening: a traditional session. The real ones start late, around Capel Street and Smithfield.
Map shows live availability and prices. We may earn a commission on bookings made through it, at no extra cost to you.
Day 3 — west to Galway
Collect the car mid-morning and drive west. Dublin to Galway is about two and a half hours, nearly all motorway.
Stop at Clonmacnoise, a sixth-century monastic city on a bend of the River Shannon with round towers and high crosses. It costs about forty minutes of extra driving and turns a transfer into a day out.
Galway is small, walkable and loud in the right way. The Latin Quarter runs live music most nights of the week. Our guide to where to stay in Galway explains why you want to be a street back from it.
Day 4 — Cliffs of Moher and the Burren
South into County Clare. The Cliffs of Moher reach about 214 metres and run for roughly 14 kilometres, with paths leading both ways from the visitor centre.
Go early or late — the coaches arrive in the middle of the day. On the way back, cross the Burren, a limestone plateau of bare grey rock with the Poulnabrone dolmen, a portal tomb around 5,800 years old, standing on it. Stop in Doolin for lunch.
Day 5 — Connemara, or go home
If your flight is late or you leave the following morning, spend the day in Connemara: mountains, bog and inlets north-west of Galway, with Kylemore Abbey on its lake and the fjord at Killary Harbour.
If you are flying out today, Shannon Airport is about an hour and a half from Galway, which makes a morning in Connemara impossible but an early departure easy. Flying from Dublin instead means a two-and-a-half-hour drive back across the country.
The alternative: five days in the south-west
If Kerry is the reason you are coming, invert the trip and skip Dublin.
- Day 1: fly into Shannon or Cork, drive to Killarney.
- Day 2: Killarney National Park — Muckross, Torc Waterfall, the Gap of Dunloe.
- Day 3: the Ring of Kerry, a full day.
- Day 4: the Dingle Peninsula and Slea Head.
- Day 5: Kinsale or Cork, and out.
This is the better five days for landscape, and it has no capital city in it at all.
What does not fit in five days
Said plainly, because this is where five-day itineraries go wrong.
Dublin plus Galway plus Kerry is three long drives in five mornings. It can be done and it is not a holiday.
Northern Ireland is a separate trip from a five-day base in the west.
The Aran Islands need a full day of their own, ferry included, so they do not fit alongside the Cliffs and Connemara.
The Ring of Kerry as a day trip from Galway is three hours of driving before the loop even starts.
Doing five days without a car
This route works on public transport better than most Irish itineraries, because it only has one long transfer.
Trains run from Dublin to Galway in about two and a half hours, from the city centre to the city centre. From Galway, full-day coach tours cover the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren on one day and Connemara on another, which are exactly the two day trips in this plan.
What you lose is Clonmacnoise on the way west and the ability to stop where you like. What you gain is not driving at all, which on a short trip is a fair trade.
What to book before you fly
- Kilmainham Gaol — sells out weeks ahead, and it is the thing people regret missing.
- The Book of Kells — timed entry; the difference between walking in and an hour in a queue.
- Your Galway nights — the city is small, and festival weeks empty it of rooms.
- The car, if you want an automatic — manual transmission is the default in Ireland and automatics are a limited, more expensive subset.
Driving notes for a short trip
On a five-day trip you are driving on the left for the first time with no spare day to recover from a bad start, so two things matter more than usual.
Collect the car mid-morning, after the Dublin commuter traffic, and take the motorway west. It is the easiest road in the country and a reasonable place to get used to the car.
Do not plan to arrive anywhere in the dark on day 3. Irish rural roads are narrow and unlit, and the first evening is the wrong time to meet them.
When to go, on a short trip
Season matters more on five days than on fourteen, because one wet day is a fifth of the trip.
May, June and September give the longest useful days with the fewest coaches. July and August have the best daylight and the worst crowds at the Cliffs of Moher. November to February leaves roughly eight hours of daylight, which on this route means dropping either Connemara or the Burren.
There is no dry season. Pack for rain in any month and plan the indoor days around the museums in Dublin.
Packing and weather, in five days
On a five-day trip there is no spare day to wait out the weather, so the answer is to be able to go out in it.
A waterproof jacket rather than an umbrella, shoes that cope with wet grass, and layers — the west coast can move between sun, wind and rain inside an hour. The Cliffs of Moher in particular are exposed, and the wind there is stronger than anywhere else on this route.
Where to sleep on five days
Two bases means two decisions, and both are about location rather than the room.
In Dublin, stay between the Liffey and St Stephen’s Green and walk everything. If you are arriving late or leaving early, the streets served by the airport coaches save a taxi at each end — our guide to where to stay in Dublin covers which those are.
In Galway, stay a street or two back from the Latin Quarter. You are beside the pubs and beside the Eyre Square tour pick-ups without being above a music session, which is the single most common complaint about Galway rooms. See where to stay in Galway.
The mistake that ruins five-day trips
It is always the same one: adding a third base.
Dublin, Galway and Killarney in five days means driving on three of them, arriving somewhere new three times, and unpacking three times. The map makes it look reasonable because Ireland is small; the roads make it a driving holiday.
If the Cliffs of Moher and the Ring of Kerry are both non-negotiable, the honest answer is that you need seven days, not five. Our 7 day Ireland itinerary is the version where both fit.
Arriving and leaving
Most five-day trips land and leave at Dublin, which suits this route. Two alternatives are worth checking before you book.
Into Dublin, out of Shannon saves the drive back across the country on the last day and costs little more on an open-jaw ticket.
Into and out of Shannon or Cork is the right booking for the south-west version above, and it removes Dublin from the trip entirely.
If you only have a long weekend
Four days is a common variant of this trip, usually flown in on a Thursday evening and out on a Monday morning, and it changes the plan in one way: you drop the second base.
Stay in Dublin for all four nights and use the city for two days, with one full day out. The Wicklow Mountains and Glendalough are about an hour south and work by car or coach tour. Brú na Bóinne, with the passage tombs at Newgrange and Knowth built around 3200 BC, is forty-five minutes north and is reached by guided tour from the visitor centre.
What does not work on four days is the west coast. A day trip to the Cliffs of Moher from Dublin is roughly three hours of driving each way, which is most of the day spent on a road rather than at a cliff.
If the west is the reason you are coming, fly into Shannon instead and give all four days to Galway and Clare.
Frequently asked questions
Is 5 days enough for Ireland?
Enough for two bases, not three. Dublin and the Galway region works, or Kerry on its own flying into Shannon or Cork. Trying to fit Dublin, Galway and Kerry into five days means three long drives in five mornings.
Can you see the Cliffs of Moher and Dublin in 5 days?
Yes. Two nights in Dublin, then Galway, with the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren as a day trip from there. The drive between them is about two and a half hours on motorway.
Should I base in Dublin or Galway for 5 days?
Both, two nights each, with the fifth day for Connemara or the flight home. Galway is the better base for day trips; Dublin is where the flights and the museums are.
Do I need a car for a 5 day Ireland trip?
For the west, effectively yes, although day tours from Galway cover the Cliffs of Moher and Connemara. Collect the car when you leave Dublin, not when you land.
Is 5 days enough for the Ring of Kerry and Dublin?
Not comfortably. Killarney is about four hours from Dublin each way, so that pairing spends two of five days driving. If Kerry is the priority, fly into Shannon or Cork and leave Dublin out.
What is the best 5 day Ireland itinerary for first timers?
Two nights in Dublin for the city, then three in Galway for the Cliffs of Moher, the Burren and Connemara. It uses one easy motorway transfer and no other long drives.
Keep planning Ireland
- Where to Stay in Kilkenny: On the Mile, or Beside the Station
- Where to Stay in Doolin: Book a Room You Can Walk Home To
- Where to Stay in Belfast: Four Quarters, Four Different Trips
- Where to Stay in Killarney: The Town, or the Lakes
- Where to Stay in Dingle: In Town, or Out Where the View Is
- Where to Stay in Ireland: Pick Three Bases, Not Seven
- Where to Stay in Galway: The Noise Decides It, Not the Distance
- Best Hotels in Dublin: What Each Kind of Building Gives You
Written and checked by
Triplarks Editorial
An editorial desk, not an invented persona: research, drafting and fact-checking are done by the same small team. Every number here carries the date it was read.