Is 5 days enough time for a family to visit Ireland with a direct flight from Seattle to Dublin?

Yes, travel is about bucket lists and places we dream about. But it’s also about budget too. So when we booked our Ireland trip from Seattle we were actually dreaming about going to Japan. We found that tickets for Japan were on the spendy side and we only had 5 days (with teenagers who have busy sports/activity/school schedules and parents with jobs it’s hard to find time to get away these days). My husband and I always believe in looking for good value so of course we had to check other direct flights from Seattle before we booked our trip. We found 4 direct flights on Aer Lingus from Seattle to Dublin that were 30% less than 4 tickets from Seattle to Tokyo. And because our family has Irish roots we decided we might as well go to Ireland with our kids and save Tokyo for another time.

And of course you can’t see ALL of Ireland in 5 days

So this is where I got input from my teenagers. Where did they want to go in Ireland? They’ve actually been helping us plan our trips for years. (For example, we never would have gone to Uluru on our sabbatical years ago if one of our guys didn’t find it in on a map during our research-I told him if he could help us find flights and they weren’t too expensive we could try to make it work.). And when the kids help plan our activities we have less complaints on the trip. So one of the guys wanted to see the Cliffs of Moher. The other wanted to see the Giant’s Causeway. We made our choice to go see the Cliffs of Moher because Giant’s Causeway was in Northern Ireland and our guys’ passports were expiring less than 6 months away (a reminder to check your passports if you are reading this….we once had a passport expiration emergency!) so we decided to stay away from Northern Ireland for this trip.

And then we found the Most Perfect Airbnb near the Cliffs of Moher

I found an airbnb that had two donkeys nearby and a castle near Doolin, a town right by the Cliffs of Moher and it turned out to be the most perfect place to stay. The donkeys ended up not being there when we arrived (they were wintering somewhere else) and I still thought it was a pretty incredible place. My hope when planning this trip was that we would stay one night in Dublin, then two nights at this Airbnb and then one night back in Dublin so that we would get a little feel of both the city and nature of Ireland. Even if the weather was bad, at least we might be able to take a peek at the Cliffs Of Moher. And I’m really thankful this plan worked out.

So then we knew we needed to rent a car in Ireland

You can rent a car in Ireland with a Washington State driver’s license but we found out that we had no insurance coverage in Ireland at all. This is one of the only places we’ve ever had to add the extra insurance offered by the rental car company and it was at least an additional 20-30 dollars a day on top of what we were paying for the rental car. Because all the money just felt like it was flowing out at the rental car place we added the automatic toll thing for the car too (another 10 dollars a day) so we wouldn’t have to worry about doing the toll roads ourselves. This was probably a cost we could have reduced but at the time we had just gotten off our red eye flight and were a little overwhelmed.

We chose two different hotels in Dublin that were spacious enough for a family of 4 (the bunkbed room at the Grafton could hold 6)

On our first night in Dublin we stayed at the Grafton hotel because it had family rooms with bunkbeds. I knew there was a restaurant in the hotel and a pizza place across the street we could eat at if we were absolutely exhausted from our travels but we also could walk and get to Temple Bar, Grafton Street and other areas to sightsee if we wanted too. I booked this hotel with Expedia and I think I might have been able to get it for a more reasonable price if I booked directly but wanted the convenience of a known booking source for our first international trip since the world shut down in 2020. This hotel also had a parking lot with discounted rates for hotel guests that was about a 5 minute walk away from the hotel.

On our last night I booked directly with Stauntons on the Green to get a family room. I originally had a room at the Cabra castle outside of Dublin but because our Airbnb was near a castle I thought we’d save staying in a castle for another trip and have one last day in the city. Stauntons on the Green is in an old townhouse on the edge of St Stephen’s Green Park and I had no idea what a beautiful space it would be. We booked a family room and ended up with a room with two bedrooms and two bathrooms and two tv’s so all of us didn’t have to watch the World Cup and there were chocolates and cookies in our room too. This was the perfect place to spend our last night and I would definitely book here again. (I think this was even more reasonable than our other hotel too.).

We ended up having enough time to sightsee a little in Dublin

We gave our guys a choice of seeing the Guinness Storehouse or Trinity College and they chose the Guinness Storehouse. We also were given tickets to the Epic Museum from Visit Ireland and that is one of the coolest museums we’ve ever visited so I’m really glad we went.

We also drove the most terrifying road we’ve ever been on

But I’ll tell you more about that later.

And we found a few gems along the way

We stopped at a few castle ruins, the oldest pub in the world in a town called Athlone that had a lot of things to see and do, a gorgeous old Abbey and a chocolate factory. We got stopped by a traffic jam of cows.

Is Ireland a place you want to visit?

If you have any questions about traveling from Seattle to Dublin you can message me and I’ll try to answer them in this post. I’ll be updating about our travels to Ireland here over the next couple weeks.

Terumi

Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys.  She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live.  She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)