My wife and I are retiring next year and are considering taking a tour of either Ireland or Scotland. I honestly don’t know much about either place. If you’re familiar with either or both of them, which do you think would make a better vacation destination? We would probably join a tour group because I’d like to see more than Dublin or Edinburgh and there’s no way I’d rent a car and drive on the left side of the road.
We went to England a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it but I don’t feel the need to rush back to it.
Any advice or information would be greatly appreciated.
They are both pleasant places with some stunning scenery.
Completely safe, english spoken as native language by everyone.
Driving on the left is really no big deal, you get used to it very easily.
Honestly I would not let that scare you into some ‘tour group’ where you are herded around in a coach to tired over-visited ‘attractions’ where they sell overpriced souvenier junk.
Read up on them a bit and go independently at your own pace, you’ll have a much better time.
Yes, I quite agree. I mean, what’s the point of being treated like sheep? What’s the point of going abroad if you’re just another tourist carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Coventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors…
I went to Ireland in September/October this year and went all over the country on trains. Also used the occasional taxis and hired a driver for 2 days. I am not driving in a foreign country.
There are only about 70,000 people in Scotland who are fluent / frequent speakers of Scottish Gaelic, and a similar number in Ireland who are daily speakers of Irish.
The reason that I’d prefer a tour group (I think) is that I’ve done all of our vacation planning in the past and it can get stressful. Especially when you have to get people from one place to another in a strange land.
My siblings and their spouses from the US toured Ireland earlier this year using CIE Tours. Pretty expensive but very posh hotels.
I live in England now so if I were to visit either country I’d fly to Dublin or Edinburgh and hire a car. The advantage to the car is you can visit small places not served by tour groups or trains. But I fully understand the reluctance to drive, I was able to ride around with people and work out the rules of the road before driving myself.
I’ve visited Dublin dozens of times and earlier this year drove up to a little place called Carlingford. I expected Ireland to be quite expensive but was pleasantly surprised. Pubs in Dublin were similar in price to London but food seemed much cheaper.
It’s been a few years since I’ve been to Scotland and that was mainly the big cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow plus a couple days in Inverness many years ago.
You may want to take into consideration where you will be flying to/from. There will be more (and probably cheaper) flights to London. From there it’s a short hop to either Dublin or Edinburgh or other locations in either country.
But if you’re in London an interesting option is the Caledonian Sleeper service from London Euston to various locations in Scotland.
There are trains, of course, but mostly between large urban centers.
Coverage of rural areas, of which there a quite a lot, is not so good.
Public transport in Edinburgh and Dublin is pretty good; neither has an actual metro system though there is one tram line from the airport in Edinburgh. But the bus services are OK.
As for driving: I really would like to dispel the fears about driving on the left: it isn’t as scary as people think. You get used to it very easily. One thing to note however is that in the UK, automatic transmission is NOT the standard: rental car rates for automatics are substantially higher. So if you’re not used to a manual gearbox, that is probably more of an issue than the side of the road!
True, there are pockets of gaelic speakers.
Mind you, these are in isolated areas which a first-time visitor is unlikely to encounter.
And even there, almost everyone will be fluent in english.
My wife and I have been to Scotland (near Ardfern and Aird) and to Ireland (west coast) a couple times each. They have all been lovely trips, but we prefer Scotland.
As for driving on the left, my wife’s family is from Cyprus and we’ve made several trips there. Overall, I’ve had quite a bit of experience driving on the left, but not so much that it is entirely comfortable for me. Roundabouts, heavy commuter traffic, and sudden situations where I have to instinctively turn one direction or the other can be a challenge. We drove through Glasgow one day during a commute time and it was a bit more than I bargained for. (Does anybody make glasses that provide a mirror image of what I should be seeing? Maybe that would help.)
Country or city? If it’s country I would recommend the Scottish Highlands, or Snowdonia in Wales, with the Lake District of England also on that list, but in 3rd place. Both are stunningly beautiful, but Ireland really lacks the high mountains. I did a trip there this past summer and didn’t rent a car but used train and bus for everything and it worked well for all 4 countries (Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland via a short plane hop).
If it’s cities, I personally prefer Glasglow to Edinburg, and I’ve heard that the castle at Stirling is a better visit than the one in Edinburg. Edinburg is a great old city, while Glasglow is a great newer city. All 3 cities are linked by a short rail hop.
I would not drive a car in a foreign country. I am too old and my eyesight is limited. For people who are younger and have better vision it’s a decent option. I won’t take any chances. But that’s me.
And you do have to be careful about what kind of cars are available.
Electric cars are becoming more prevalent as well and I have no idea how to even start with those.
As I stated we hired a private driver for 2 days to take us into the country which was sufficient. We also took a couple day bus trips out to Dingle and The Ring of Kerry. Taxis were plentiful and not all that expensive for the most part.
In 2 weeks we visited Killarney, Cork, Dublin, Galway, Cobh, Kinsale and Belfast and a bunch of small towns in between. Not being in a tour group allowed us to pace our itinerary according to our energy level. I did have to bow out on one day’s arrangements as I caught a second round of Covid and and was miserable.
Everyone is different in how they travel and choices need to be made that instill confidence and comfort. I have done tour groups before and they work for some occasions.
Every 4 years I go with a friend to Germany for a family reunion and we arrange a bus tour group through other countries with the American travelers.
My work colleague said she liked the Go Ahead tours for Ireland but I have never used them.
I am at the point where I like to stay as independent as possible while not treading into my own self imposed danger zone.
Planning on doing Scotland this year at some point but haven’t done a deep dive into options.
All I can say is that Ireland was a magical, beautiful place and I enjoyed every minute.
I really hope you didn’t pronounce or write either city name like that when you were there. (Also Edinburgh is never pronounced “Edinburrow” - it’s always “Edinburruh”.)
All Irish and all Gaelic speakers over the age of about five are bilingual, and so also native speakers of English. There are some people who are better in Irish or Gaelic than in English, but very few, and you are unlikely to encounter them. There are some areas where English isn’t the main daily language, but very few and rather remote, and you’d have to seek them out.
(But do spend a few minutes reading about the languages of these countries: it’s always sad when the language of the central government stamps out the prior languages).
