Curated Rankings
Top 10 Lists
Our definitive rankings, based on personal experience across Ireland.
Every list here is exactly ten, and every list is ordered. We do not publish twenty-five-item round-ups, and we do not rank things we have not been to. If a famous hotel, course or restaurant is missing from a list, that is the verdict rather than an oversight, and where it matters we say why in the piece itself.
The rankings are written from an expat perspective. We are Americans living in Ireland, which means we know both what the country is genuinely good at and what a visitor flying in from Boston or Dallas actually needs to know: the drive times, the booking windows, the seasons when a place is worth the money and the months when it is not.
Lists are revisited rather than left to age. When a kitchen changes hands, a course reopens after works, or a hotel drops off its own standard, the ranking moves. Where we hold an affiliate relationship with a property, the placement is still earned. Nobody has ever paid for a position on one of these lists.
The Lists
Planning a specific kind of trip rather than browsing rankings? Start with Travel by Style, or read the longer pieces in The Notebook. Two of the lists above are chapters of a longer argument, set out in our Literary Ireland edition.
Common questions