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Daily Deal—Ireland for $399

Hello and welcome to the reidsguides.com daily travel deal for March 1, 2005.

Yep, for $399 per person, you could be spending your days bombing down country lanes past a rumpled quilt of green fields, exploring ancient Celtic ruins and romantically roofless monasteries, and pausing in village pubs to cozy up to the peat fire and share a pint of Guinness with the locals while a band in the corner jams on traditional Irish music.

And did I mention that plane tickets from the us are included?

This deal from ireland.com includes airfare from New York or Boston into Shannon airport (other departure cities cost more, of course). To fly into Dublin costs $30 more, but really, the best of Ireland is on its west coast, so flying into Shannon makes a lot more sense.

You also get that rental car for four days, and four nights’ lodging. The first night is at the Airport Sheraton—bland, yes, but doesn’t matter, because at Shannon you’re within a few hours drive of County Kerry and Killarney National Park, of a dozen touristy favorites like sweater mills and kissing the Blarney Stone, as well as of County Clare, home to the undulating Cliffs of Moher and the weird landscape of the Burren.

For the other three nights you get vouchers good at any of your choice from a network of 450 farmhouse B&Bs. Now, at the base price of $399, you’re looking at rooms where you have to share a bath down the hall. If you don’t like that idea, for an additional fee you can upgrade to private baths and a much broader list of some 2,000 B&Bs to pick from.

You can also pay to upgrade your car from standard transmission to automatic. There’s even an option to spend one night in a bona fide castle. Want to stay longer on the emerald isle? the seven-day/ six-night version of this package starts at $599 per person.

You can find links to these ireland.com deals—as well as hundreds of trip planning tools and a series of articles on my last Irish vacation—at www.reidsguides.com.