We’ve heard from a few of our friends and followers who share our newfound love of Ireland, many of whom have been there and have asked where we stayed while we were in Ireland. Our first two days were in Dublin, which price-wise is on a par with London and New York, so we stayed out on the perimeter at the Dublin Ibis. It was actually a great hotel, clean and modestly priced, staffed with friendly and helpful people, and an easy walk to catch the tram for a 30-minute ride downtown.
But the real gems of our swing through Ireland were our two AirBnB places. Our travel plan was to set down in Western Ireland, somewhere near Limerick or Galway, for 4 nights, then move south, somewhere near Cork, for another 4 nights. In both areas we picked AirBnB options that turned out to be fantastic.
AirBnB seems to still carry a bit of a reputation as a backpacker’s site for finding places to crash. And though you can set your search options for “shared rooms”–something akin to the rental version of couch surfing–you can also search for private rooms and entire homes. Private rooms, in our experience, can be just that (as was our first stay in London back in June): a spare room in someone’s house or flat. It didn’t feel too very different than that. But they can also be private rooms in a B&B or pension. With an “entire home”, you get the whole place to yourself, just like booking on HomeAway.com or HolidayLettings.com. That’s what our two places in Ireland were.
West: Silvermines Vacation Rental, Silvermore
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| https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/2726487?s=fBwL |
AirBnB host Paul offers two, 2-bedroom apartments in the tiny little village of Silvermines. It’s a great Irish country village, with no restaurants, 1 tiny pub (serving no food), and a little grocery market only slightly larger than your own kitchen. One of Paul’s apartments lies on the 2nd and 3rd floors, which is where we stayed; the other stretches out behind his building on a single level (seen on the left of the picture above).
Paul has done a great job refurbishing this old blacksmith shop (part of it was also once a butcher shop). His two places are spacious, modern, well-appointed, and clean. It’s no exaggeration that the bathrooms and showers in his apartment were the best we’ve ever experienced in Europe.
The village of Silvermines, though without a restaurant or pub serving food, is only 15 minutes from the town of Nenagh where there are quite a few eating options, as well as a couple of larger markets. But to be able to hike up just out of the village on a nature trail to see ruins of the old silver mining operations (hence the name of the village), then stop in the pub directly across the street for a Guinness and great conversations with curious locals, Silvermines is an idyllic Irish country village. We joked–only half-heartedly–that Paul may singlehandedly establish Silvermines’ tourist economy with his AirBnB listing.
South: The Old Railway House, Lismore
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| https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/3567386?s=k_0z |
Hosts Miriam and John offer one of those great, unique experiences you periodically come across on listing sites like AirBnB. They own a former rail station, and they’ve converted the ticket and passenger’s building into their home. The adjacent freight building they’ve converted into a bungalow that Miriam had used as a daycare, but now–fortunately for us travelers–she lets it out via AirBnB.
If we thought Silvermines was Irish countryside, then we “took it up a notch” with Miriam and John’s old railway house. Their place is surrounded by farmland: rows of corn to one side, horses to the other. It was a wonderfully peaceful setting.
They’ve also done a great job with their work on the cottage. It’s clean, spacious, outfitted nicely, and overflowing with great character. Standing outside the cottage, you can still see the platform where passengers came and went, and you can still walk along the bed where the tracks used to lie.
Miriam and John–like Paul–were wonderful, helpful, and attentive hosts, themselves adding to our wonderful experiences and memories of Ireland, though probably not realizing it. These two AirBnB spots are easily our best-yet AirBnB experiences.
