itshalfempty

This post was written on June 3rd, 2025. I wanted it to appear chronologically in my postings, so I’ve backdated it.

At the end of April, my wife and I spent about two weeks in Ireland and Scotland. Planning the trip was pretty tough - a week in either location didn’t really seem like enough, so we really whittled down the itinerary. The big stuff was planned out months in advance - but I lost both my grandmothers leading up to the trip, and neither of us really had the mental capacity to plan out dinners and stops before we landed in Dublin.

We decided to drive across both countries, which made it easier to get to some of the places we wanted to see without committing to a full tour. Our planned itinerary was roughly:

• Arrive in Dublin, pick up the rental car, and drive to Belfast
• Spend a day in Belfast
• Drive to Galway with a stop at the Giant’s Causeway
• Spend a day exploring Galway
• Drive back to Dublin, stopping at the Cliffs of Moher, and drop off the rental car
• Spend a day in Dublin
• Fly to Edinburgh, pick up the rental car, and drive to Glasgow
• Drive to the Isle of Skye, through the Glencoe Valley
• Spend 2 days exploring Skye
• Drive back to Edinburgh, stopping in Inverness, and drop off the rental car
• Spend 2 days in Edinburgh
• Return home

Ireland (And Northern Ireland)

Belfast

In hindsight, Belfast was probably skippable. We spent our day walking around the city center, which was very pedestrian friendly, but not particularly interesting. There was a lot of street art across the city, which was pretty neat.

Pretty much the thing to do in Belfast is the Titanic Experience. We knew going in it was probably going to be a bit underwhelming, and it turned out to be true. I was expecting more of a museum where you’re free to roam around exhibits - but instead it was a linear path through a few exhibits that intended to tell the story of building the Titanic, of the night it sank, and of the people lost. In the abstract it sounds interesting, but I didn’t think any of the exhibits were particularly interesting. I definitely didn’t think it was worth the price of admission.

The best part of the experience, in my opinion, was the walk along the water and walking the ground where the Titanic was built, but both of those are completely free.

The Drive to Galway

We didn’t have a specific route planned to get from Belfast to Galway, other than we knew we wanted to stop at the Giant’s Causeway.

We decided to largely follow the coastal road on the northern coast of North Ireland. We stopped at Carrickfergus castle, which was actually really cool. They had a lot of mocked-up people and settings so you could see what it looked like back in the day.

The coastal road was pretty slow moving with a lot of traffic circles, and the weather was not particularly favorable for good views. We made it the Giant’s Causeway and decided to walk through the rain from the “Giant’s Causeway Experience” to the main attraction. It wasn’t raining all too hard initially, but the walk was a little long and it was very windy. By the time we made it down the hill we were both very cold and wet, and even more so when we made it back to the top of the hill. There is a shuttle that you can take either up or down, but given the rain, the line was long to get on the shuttle and it turned out that walking was faster than waiting anyway.

Overall it was neat to see the landscape and the crazy rock formations, but the admission cost of the “Experience” was steep given that it consisted essentially of restrooms, a parking lot, a cafe, and a gift shop. That said, hot chocolate was very much in order after our soggy walk in the cold wind!

We spent the night in Coleraine and got to Galway in the early afternoon the next day.

Galway

We didn’t really know what to expect in Galway, but we went walking around the day we arrived. We were expecting to have a full day to spend in the city, but after spending half a day walking around, we decided that was enough.

The touristy city center is somewhat small, pretty cute, but it also felt very touristy. There were a ton of pubs and touristy shops, but it didn’t really feel like a real city.

I didn’t take many photos during our half day in Galway - in part because it was really crowded and raining, but also because it just looked like any super touristy distict of a smaller city.

Cliffs of Moher

Instead of spending another day in Galway, we decided to instead go to the Cliffs of Moher and explore a little bit more of Ireland. That would make the drive back to Dublin a lot more reasonable. In hindsight, this turned out to be a really good idea.

While I was really tempted to embark on a longer walk along the cliffs, unfortunately the foot paths that connect to the very picturesque section at the “Cliffs of Moher experience” were all closed. So we could definitely go for a long walk, but we’d miss out on the view. We decided to just go first thing in the morning to the main parking lot, pay for admission, and then have the rest of the afternoon for exploring.

The views were cool, but it is a bummer that the foot paths were closed. There wasn’t really all that much to see at the Experience. You could only walk about a half mile along the cliffs, which didn’t really give much of a different view.

It was fortunate we arrived so early. We had only visited for an hour or so, but in that time, multiple tour busses had arrived and the area was overrun by people. I can’t imagine what it would be like in the Summer! There was also a long line of cars waiting to get into the parking lot.

Afterwards, we drove south, away from Galway, to find something for lunch. We ended up in Lahinch, which was surprisingly a great place to stop. There was a beach and quite a lot of options for food, as well as some shopping. There was also a big (and very busy) golf course.

Drive to Dublin

The drive from Galway to Dublin wasn’t going to be that long – only about 4 hours, so we took it easy and stopped a couple of times.

We picked Athlone to stop at for lunch. It was Easter Monday and a lot of things were closed, unfortunately. But there were still neat views of the church and castle in the center of the city.

I had also decided that we hadn’t seen enough castles yet. The Rock of Dunamase wasn’t too far out of the way, and photos online looked kind of neat. The day was really nice and since a lot of shops were closed, we decided to give it a go. It was a really great decision. It was an old castle ruin that was one of the highlights for me of our time in Ireland.

Dublin

We knew Dublin has had a growing tech presence for some time now, and it’s been on our radar for a while of somewhere we could possibly get jobs if we wanted to live in Europe. So in some sense, our time in Dublin was spent looking through a lens of, “could we see ourselves living here?” The day and change we spent in Dublin certainly wasn’t enough to answer that question, but it wasn’t a firm no.

We walked A LOT in Dublin. At a few points we thought about getting a cab, but then we just kept walking. Overall the city felt very new and very modern, but most of our time was spent in and around Temple Bar, which was very clearly aimed at taking money from tourists.

We visited the Book of Kells Experience. (That’s a lot of “experiences” we’ve been to on this trip). There were a lot of displays about the paper, art, and pigments used in the time period. Overall they were interesting but not very detailed - and much like the Titanic experience, a lot of people seemed to want to read everything that was on display.

The book itself was cool to see, but unfortunately they had a fairly boring page on display. It was largely just text and not any of the highly decorated pages, several of which you could see photos of in the static displays just before seeing the book.

The highlight of the experience though was The Long Room, even though the books themselves had been removed as part of restoration work.

I don’t think we could visit Dublin and not go to the Guiness Storehouse. And I think it’s technically called the Guiness Storehouse Experience, so there’s one more experience to include in the tally.

It’s fairly expensive per person, and while you do get a “free” beer out of it, I’m not sure the rest of the experience was really worth the time or money unless you’re a really big Guiness fan. They put a lot of money into making the displays really engaging, but at the end of the day I personally find walking through an actual brewery, talking to the actual brewers, a lot more interesting.

The tasting room on the top floor was incredibly crowded. Like, uncomfortably so. And I’m sure it can get even worse. If I were to make a recommendation for those set on going, it would be to go as early in the day as possible.

I’ve heard people say that the Guiness tastes better at the storehouse because it’s so fresh. Honestly though, I can’t say I could tell a difference from the Guiness there or anywhere else across Ireland. But maybe I’ve just lost my palette for alcohol since I almost never drink anymore.

Scotland

Glasgow

I knew Edinburgh and Glasgow were close, but wow I didn’t realize just how close together they really are. It was a very short drive after landing in Edinburgh and picking up the rental car.

We only had half a day in Glasgow and that was probably about the right amount of time. The city seemed pretty cool. It definitely felt like it had NYC vibes to me between the architecture and the subway. Some parts of the city were on pretty steep hills.

The Drive to Skye

Driving to Sky, we drove through the Glencoe valley. It was a very picturesque drive through the Scottish Highlands. We stopped at a bunch of pullovers to enjoy the view. But I could totally see myself coming back and going for some hikes in this area.

One of the best stops on the route we took was at The Three Sisters. I took some photos, but I couldn’t get all three peaks in frame. And to be honest, any photo wouldn’t really do the view justice. The parking lot was small and it was pretty frustrating trying to get parked so we could hop out for a few minutes and enjoy the view.

We had a stopover in Kyle of Locash, and visited the Eileen Donan Castle. The castle fairly recognizable since it’s been used for filming a bunch of stuff - including the movie Highlander.

While we were there, a couple of (presumably RAF) fighters made a low pass over the Loch just behind the castle, and I managed to snap a couple photos!

The Isle of Skye

We stayed in a fantastic AirBnb just outside of Portree on Skye and spent a couple of days exploring. We didn’t have much of an itinerary planned, but we did have a few things bookmarked to check out.

Overall, the landscape changed a lot across the island, but generally it was fairly barren grazing pastures for sheep.

One of the coolest places on Skye we visited was the Dunvegan Castle. We walked in fairly blind because we were trying to find something we could do in pretty rainy weather. The Castle itself was cool enough - but it had an enormous and very impressive garden. Lots of flowers were in bloom while we were there, which was definitely fortunate as well. Here are just a few of the photos I took - the property was really large though and I’d highly recommend a visit.

The castle is still in active use by the clan. One of the staff members said they just had a lunch in the formal dining room the week before our visit.

The island isn’t really that big, but it’s fairly sparsely populated and most of the roads are small, single-track roads through large expanses of nothing. The whole island is really beautiful, and hiking is definitely the thing to do in Skye. I would be happy to come back and spend a couple weeks just in Skye.

One early morning I hiked up to Old Man Storr, which is not too far from Portree. In theory, it’s a pretty popular hike of some cook rock formations. Unfortunately for me, we were blessed with low lying clouds for most of our trip, and I didn’t really have much of a view of the old man, or from the summit. It was a pretty fun hike though. Starting the hike really early was pretty fortunate, as the parking lot got to be very full by the time I finished.

If the weather had been better, and if we had been just a little more prepared for a real hike, I would have been really tempted to hike The Quairing. The view from the trailhead was insane.

Edinburgh

We dropped the car off at the airport, then took the tram into the city. We were staying in a hotel very close to a tram stop, so it was convenient. I knew there was a castle in the city, but based on all of the other cities we visited on the trip with castles, I was expecting it to be relatively underwhelming and a little out of the way.

I could not contain my excitement on the tram as we got into the city, greeted by the enormous castle looming over the city top of a big hill.

We spent our first day exploring the old town and the castle. The castle was definitely cool, but it was a very popular attraction and it was pretty packed.

We toured St. Giles Cathedral and saw some ads for chamber music in the church. We debated it for a while before deciding to do it. The ambience was pretty insane, and the musicians were pretty good, too. We were treated to two string quartet pieces, one from Haydn and one from Mendelssohn.

Our second day was spent walking around some different neighborhoods. We did a ton of walking, but the highlight for sure was going to the Dean Village.

Takeaways

I really enjoyed the trip overall. If I could go back and change one thing though, it would probably be trying to figure out how to avoid driving at all. While I enjoy driving at times and (at least think I) am a fairly decent driver, I’d still rather relax on a bus or a train and read, sleep, or just enjoy the scenery. Unfortunately I think transit options are limited in many of the areas we visited, but there were no shortage of both large and small tours we passed pretty much everywhere.