Two Smart Base Towns for Exploring Ireland
How staying just outside the tourist hubs saved us money — and led to some of our most memorable discoveries in Galway and Kerry.
It’s no secret that Ireland is a beautiful country, filled with both natural and man-made wonders that attract millions of visitors each year. In 2024, Ireland welcomed 6.6 million tourists, about 1.2 million more than the native population. With those numbers in such a small country, many sites become very crowded, and prices near tourism centers creep up.
One way to avoid the worst of the crowds is to travel in the “shoulder seasons,” before or after the peak months. We did this ourselves, staying in Ireland for the entire month of May, but still ran into some pretty good crowds.
We also found another way to keep costs down and see more of the “authentic” Ireland. We rented a car and booked accommodations near the hot spots but outside the fray. The savings in lodging costs alone paid for the convenience of having our own car.
Galway Area
A good example is our visit to County Galway. Rather than book a hotel in the popular city of Galway, we stayed in the small town of Oranmore. It sits just a few miles south of Galway on a small inlet of Galway Bay. While hotel costs in Galway can start at $200 a night or higher, we checked into a comfortable one-bedroom apartment in Oranmore with a living room and full kitchen for just $100 a night.
The savings didn’t stop there. With a full kitchen, we made our own breakfast each morning and sometimes dinner in the evening. Oranmore has a large Tesco supermarket (“Every little helps”), allowing us to shop like the locals and save anywhere from $50 to $100 a day on restaurant meals.
From our base in Oranmore, we could take day trips into Galway and enjoy the colorful Latin Quarter, knowing we were only a 10-minute drive from home. One day we drove through the countryside to visit Kylemore Abbey, taking our time inside the Abbey, strolling the grounds and the walled Victorian Garden, and still fitting in lunch at Ashford Castle. After exploring the castle, the gardens, and even the School of Falconry, we completed our circle around Lough Corrib, marveling at the landscapes and keeping an eye out for sheep grazing by the narrow roads.
From Oranmore, we were also within striking distance of the Cliffs of Moher. Along the way, we stopped at Dunguaire Castle, standing sentinel over another Galway Bay inlet. The Cliffs were stunning, but our favorite view came on another day when we caught a boat from Galway to the Aran Islands. After a delightful day on Inishmore, our captain made a long, slow pass by the Cliffs of Moher, which are even more impressive from the sea.
Killarney National Park
Sometimes this money-saving method offers a bonus. A case in point was our stay later in the month, further south as we completed the Ring of Kerry.
Killarney National Park was on our must-see list. Again, rather than pay higher rates in Killarney, we found a room for less than half the cost in a charming home in the small town of Kenmare. The owner, a sweet Irish matron who tidied up with the help of her granddaughter, dressed in a Disney princess gown, had turned their large house into a small hotel with about ten en suite rooms.
Killarney National Park was everything we had hoped for and more. It was Ireland’s first national park, created when the Muckross Estate was donated to the Irish Free State in 1932. Since then, it has grown to more than 25,000 acres of biodiverse land and lakes. There’s the Muckross House and Abbey, kilometers of walking trails, a working farm, the Torc Waterfall, horse-drawn carriage rides, and much more to see and do.
We knew we would enjoy the park. But when we saw how crowded and touristy Killarney was, we were even more glad we had chosen to stay elsewhere. What we didn’t expect was how quickly we would fall in love with Kenmare.
Kenmare is small, with only around 2,500 residents and just three main streets. While it’s on the Ring of Kerry and has businesses that cater to tourism, it still has an authentic small-town feel. Most tourists seemed to pass through without lingering. Sitting outside a pub across from the large park in the center of town, enjoying a Guinness, we heard most of the patrons around us speaking Gaelic.
Our stay didn’t include a kitchen this time, but the town was so small and walkable, the locals so friendly, and the pubs and coffeehouses so inviting and affordable, that we had a wonderful time. We even extended our stay by a night just to enjoy more of what Kenmare had to offer.
— Jim Santos, IL Roving Correspondent
Editor’s note: Choosing a base just outside the tourist centers is a great way to save money and uncover hidden gems that make your journey truly memorable.
And the journey doesn’t stop here—coming tomorrow on Live Better Abroad, we’ll take you off the well-worn trail and into the heart of western Ireland: County Roscommon. Castles, warrior-queen legends, famine history, and small-town charm… discover why this “uncommon” stop became the highlight of the trip.