"There's No Place Like Roundstone " a Roundstone Travel Page by cpiers47

UPDATE: Hello and Welcome to my Roundstone page. If you've made it here via my blog, thanks for clicking! I'm happy to answer any questions about that trip. At one point in the planning, I threw up my hands and was ready to give up. Determined to find another Irish village that was more accessible, I went back to my guidebook, only to read, "There's no place in Ireland quite like Roundstone." Re-determined, we figured out a way to make our whole itinerary work. It can be done.

I'm happy to answer questions about any of my other trips as well. Feel free to browse through my travel pages and pictures. I also encourage you to wander through other sites here. Like Venice, Virtual Tourist is a great place to get lost!

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While researching the west of Ireland for my 2007 trip, I spent a lot of time on VT and reading travel guides about some of the more rural places in the West. I knew that we'd be looking for some place out of the city to see Ireland at its best. While planning, I kept running across references to a tiny place called Roundstone in books and in conversations with some of my more adventuresome friends. Then, while watching
The Matchmaker,
one of my favorite Irish movies, I realized that the movie had been filmed there as well. That sealed the deal and we booked a rental car from Galway. It just proves that travel inspiration can come from unlikely sources.

Roundstone certainly feels like a perfect Irish fishing village. We visited in mid June and found ourselves some of the only tourists in the middle of the week. Had we been able to stay through the weekend, we were assured to great droves of people heading to the cultural events that take place every weekend of the summer starting in June.

This was the hardest part to plan. Before leaving on our trip, my friend and I had decided not to rent a car because of some of the nightmare stories we'd heard. Even the "we made it okay" stories had some element of worry or suspense, and so we were happy to let bus routes determine our travels.

Then came our decision to visit Roundstone. I spent much time online and reading to determine the bus schedules from Galway to Connemara. Conclusion, we could get to Roundstone on a Wednesday but not back to anywhere by bus until Sunday. If you have the time, this would be wonderful. But, we didn't. We only had two nights to spend out of our whirlwind trip.

So, we hired a car and crossed our fingers. My friend can't drive a manual transmission and so she became the official navigator. . .a very important position. What helped the most was actually our own "mistake." In order to save a bit of money on car rental, we took the bus to the Inis Mor ferry at Rossaveal, then back to Galway the next day. That meant that by the time I was driving the first part of the coast road toward Roundstone, I'd ridden on it by bus twice. Honestly, once you get out of Galway, the roads are easy to navigate.

Next time, if I were visiting the Aran Islands and Roundstone again, I would probably have the car for an extra day or two and leave it in Rossaveal while taking the ferry back and forth to Inis Mor. The most infuriating part of the trip was traveling back and forth and waiting for the rental company (please read my tip about Enterprise in Galway).