“Happy Christ­mas” as the Irish would say in Eng­lish or “Nol­lag Shana Duet” as the Irish would say in Irish (Gaelic). Either one will work dur­ing your Christ­mas Shop­ping Trip to Ireland.

Pre­pos­ter­ous? Hardly. Many peo­ple make an annual Christ­mas shop­ping trip to New York. Consider the cost of your trans­porta­tion to NYC, add the high cost of the hotel rooms and con­sider how much you spent on the tick­ets for a Broad­way show. Not exactly a bargain! 

Too far to travel for a short trip? Those that live in the North­east go to the West Coast for a week­end. A flight to Ire­land takes about the same amount of time! Why not mix it up a lit­tle this year with a shop­ping trip to the Old Sod? 

You could do the trip in three nights but why not stretch it to four since your biggest expense is the flight? Round trip flights and a four star hotel will cost you as lit­tle as $1050 to go to Dublin, $1300 to go Belfast and $1175 if you choose the short­est flight to Shan­non and spend your nights in Gal­way. Bump it up to a 5 star hotel right in the cen­ter of the Dublin shop­ping dis­trict for another $300. By the way, all of these prices are per per­son sharing.

If you’re con­cerned that four (or even three) days of shop­ping in the same city is too much, go to another city. If you fly into to Dublin, you can get to Belfast in a lit­tle under two hours and Gal­way in a lit­tle more than two hours. Or you could fly to Lon­don, Edin­burgh or Glas­gow for the day for under $200.

If you do choose Dublin and get tired of shop­ping there is plenty to do. There are sev­eral excel­lent walk­ing tours to choose from includ­ing a His­tor­i­cal Walk­ing Tour, Tra­di­tional Irish Musi­cal Pub Crawl, the 1919 Rebel­lion Walk­ing Tour and my favourite, A Dublin Lit­er­ary Pub Crawl. There are also sev­eral excel­lent muse­ums and exhibits includ­ing the famous Guin­ness Store­house. Finally, there are sev­eral Miche­lin starred restau­rants and no trip to Dublin is com­plete with­out a visit or two to the pubs!