Cookstown is famous for having one of the widest and longest main streets in Ireland and the street was part of an ambitious plan to build a model town by an eighteenth century Tyrone landlord, William Stewart, which never quite got on the ground. His...
Just beyond Queens University in Belfast are the Botanic Gardens. It is just one of the several attractive parks that provide green space and beauty, in and around this crowded city. The Gardens are a summer oasis for those seeking the sun (when it actually...
Every area of Ireland has its particular saint, as do more or less all days in the Irish calender. Apart from Patrick, Columba and Brendan, the best known, there are a number of others worthy of special mention here. Among them is St. Brigid founded...
"In a quiet water'd land stands Saint Kieran's city fair" are the poetic words used by the Offaly poet T W Rolleston (1857-1920) to describe Clonmacnoise, the monastic jewel in Offaly. One of the country's most important centers of craftmanship and learning in the medieval period,...
Ireland became part of the expanding British empire at the beginning of the 19th century. In the meantime , between 1800 and 1841 , the Irish population increased rapidly , from a little over four million to around eight million. This was made possible by...
Christopher Columbus really had very little claim to being the original discoverer of the New World. Prior to his geographically confused explorations of 1492, and even before the supposed voyages of the Norsemen several centuries earlier, St. Brendan, another celebrated Irish saint, is said to...
When Ireland Luxury Tours have clients on the North Coast people are often puzzled and surprised to see distant mountains and islands on the horizon. Some believe it to be some remote part of Ireland and most are pleasantly surprised to learn it is indeed...
Well the eruption in Iceland has now grounded all planes for 2 days now. The situation is being reviewed but flights are unlikely until after 7.00pm Friday 16th April 2010. We at Ireland Luxury Tours have been lucky as all of our clients are here and not leaving...
Although somewhat hackneyed nowadays , the term "Emerald Isle" is not without foundation. The fields , watered particularly in the west by the high rainfall deposited by clouds arriving over the Atlantic , do have a deep green quality rarely seen elsewhere. A lot of...
The well-known Irish ability to wax lyrical on just about any imaginable topic is often attributed to the 'Blarney'. Our driver/guides at Ireland Luxury Tours are "full of it". At Blarney Castle, close to the city of Cork, the Blarney Stone is said, if kissed, to...