Irish Heritage Tours Bring Family Home to the Emerald Isle

It’s March! The month of the year where we remember one specific heritage – The Irish. 

Over 40 million Americans, or about 15% of the population, claim some sort of Irish heritage, which gives many of them the perfect excuse to have a beer or two on St. Patrick’s Day.

Why not celebrate this tradition on the Emerald Isle?

CIE Tours International is one of the oldest tour companies around; it’s been around almost 80 years.  The New Jersey company’s CEO, Brian Stack, knows a thing or two about putting together a good tour of Ireland. He’s a native!

The tour company offers many kinds of tours and not just to Ireland. Besides their coach tours which allow travelers to move from place to place in a luxury escorted coach, they also offer the option to drive yourself from place to place or hire a chauffeured car for private travel. This gives families a lot of flexibility and eliminates some of the worry of traveling with smaller children.

Besides tours exclusively of Ireland, CIE also offers Ireland and Britain tours, Scotland, England, Italy, Eastern Europe (including Russia), and multi-country packages.

They offer many options within Ireland itself. While on the new  “Irish Heritage” tour, your family will spend time hitting the high points of Ireland including Dublin, Shannon, the Ring of Kerry, the Cliffs of Moher, Bunratty and the luxurious Dromoland Castle, a five-star hotel in, of course, an ancient castle.

Dinners are included for six of the nine days you will be traveling, and includes a medieval banquet at Bunratty Castle, built in the 15^th Century. The trip takes you to the beautiful Killarney, nestled in between lakes and mountains.  See Waterville, Charlie Chaplin’s favorite holiday spot, kiss the “Stone of Eloquence” (aka, The Blarney Stone) at Blarney Castle and then on to Dublin, among other places.

Other Irish tours include their 4-night “Taste of Ireland,” The longer “Jewels of Ireland” which is 15 days, among others. A very popular tour they offer is the Britain and Ireland Grand Tour which takes begins in London, moves to Scotland, then the group takes a ferry to Ireland for several days, and finally back to London.

The tours are all-inclusive, meaning there are no “up-sells” in the packages. While you aren’t forced to do any of the suggested activities, the only extra money you would need for trips like this would be for drinks and souvenirs. Stack says the advantage with this is that you don’t have to worry about exchanging currency.

Many multi-generational families take these trips. Stack says people want to take these trips all together because older generations often have a closer tie to the family’s Irish heritage. The stories they can tell while on the trip will make for life-long memories for the younger generations.

While March is not as good as June, when the weather is very mild and the days last from 4:30 am to 11:00 pm due to the longitude, it is a great time to be there for the St. Patrick’s celebrations. There’s still time to book a March trip to experience the emerald holiday. Check out their website today at www.cietours.com/us/ for more information.