Ireland Travel

Parades and festivities are scheduled all over Ireland, though the parade through Downtown Dublin on March 17 is regarded as the best and biggest with 4,000 performers and a crowd of 500,000 expected.

There are true stories, and then there are Irish stories.

Under ragged shreds of clouds and swirling mist we knock the van down a skinny rock and dirt road and park at the beginning of the Meanean Pass in the round-shouldered Maumturk Mountains. At a signpost made of recycled tires, we equip ourselves with backpacks and wind up a stony pilgrim's path.

Guglielmo Marconi made the first transmission connecting Europe with North America here in 1907 with a 10,000 word memo. And the first non-stop transatlantic flight, a modified World War I Vickers Vimy bomber, crash-landed in a bog here in 1919. Now gulls hang in the air like kites.

Up the stunning R478 coastal road, full of scoops and cuts, pleats and tucks, bights and coves, where the cold Atlantic is engaged in its never-ending battle with the rocky shore: By mid-afternoon, we pull into "The Cliffs of Insanity," as so aptly termed in The Princess Bride.

We pass a string of shuttered pubs. "A good puzzle would be to cross Ireland without passing a pub," James Joyce quipped. But with the fall from Celtic Tiger to Celtic Kitten in the past years, and with new indoor anti-cigarette laws, and stricter laws on drunk driving, folks are staying closer to home.

On those rare summer days when the white sands of Ballydonegan beach horseshoe into an ocean hued with turquoise, Allihies has the air of a Celtic Caribbean.

Theme parks in Ireland offer some of the biggest thrills in Europe. If you're not in the right place at the right time, you may miss its traveling Fun...

Ireland has always been a popular destination for Americans, many of whom trace their ancestry to the island. Yet there is more on offer here than nos...

If you've been partying it up since New Year's Day, you may not feel like jumping straight back on the sauce in one of Europe's drinking capitals. But...

On a recent trip to Ireland, I did something I've never done before: rented a private castle. I'm not kidding.