Looking for a place to rest your feet and feast your eyes on the sights and sounds of Dublin’s fair city? Award-winning photographer Dave G Kelly shows us his favourite benches for people-watching, view-soaking and cuddling around the capital    King’s Inn No, your eyes are not deceiving you; this really is a tree slowly [...]

Writer and photographer Adrian Hendroff never ceases to be inspired by Ireland’s landscape. A qualified Mountain Leader, he offers advice on hill-walking and mountaineering around Ireland, and gives us a sneak preview of all his favourite peaks   Ireland’s landscape is varied and distinctive. Beyond the low-lying plains of the midlands are untrodden high places [...]

County Clare is preparing for the tide of dancing and romancing that rushes in with the upcoming Matchmaking Festival Picture, for a moment, an Irish farmer in September, carefully reviewing his To Do list and scratching off his tasks: 1. Gather harvest Tick. 2. Shoe horses Tick His eyes fall to the final line: 3. [...]

Pierce Brosnan did it in an 800-year-old Abbey. The Beckhams did it on matching thrones. Heather Mills and Paul McCartney did it beside a lake with fireworks, and Dita Von Teese did it wearing purple. So what were these celebrities up to? They were each having a spectacular wedding in Ireland, that’s what! The island [...]

Ever been to a play where the actor’s last line is delivered, lights dimmed, curtain lowered and the audience erupts…in riots? Welcome to Dublin, and its amazingly chequered theatrical past and present, says Julie Basque. Okay, don’t fret, you didn’t miss the morning paper! The whole riot thing happened back in 1926 when Sean O’Casey’s [...]

Hey ladies, reckon your gaze holds a particular, indefinable “truth in your eyes”? If so, you may just be the next Rose of Tralee and winner of a five-day festival seeking the sweetest ‘Rose’ based on her intellect, ambitions and aspirations. And those truthful eyes? Well, they’re taken from the 19th century song The Rose [...]

While it’s true that most of our visitors wing it over here by air, there is another option for reaching our shores – the super-modern, über-comfortable ferry! Ferry routes are zipping millions of passengers a year between the ports of Ireland and the UK and Europe. Now, obviously, the ferry is not going to beat [...]

The first rays of the morning illuminate the tent, the morning breeze rustles the trees, the smell of grass and bark fill your nostrils and you share your first glimpse of the day with the squirrel hopping past. Ireland makes some bedfellow to wake up with finds Julie Basque. There’s a reason they call the [...]

Scuba divers are some of the keenest travellers on the planet, because for them there are two worlds to explore: above and below the waves. And because we’re an island, Ireland has so much more scope for discovering the weird and the wonderful below the shoreline! Flipper-footed explorers from around the world come to Ireland [...]

There are even some spots of Ireland that this local hasn’t experienced…just yet!