Cobh (Cork) to Blarney Castle & Kinsale - Shore Excursion

Local tour guide “Butlers shore tour” not show up for our tour in spite the conformation was sent to me from Viator even 2-3 hr before tour. But taxi driver appear on a pier and told us this company usually not coming if not enough people booked. Taxi driver pushed us to book him for more then twice higher price .I refused. He even called to local tour operators and Kevin from local company told us they don’t have any booking with Viator for today. I made an arrangement with taxi Driver Mike Corcoran to have a tour for 250 euro( not 190 dollars including castle entrance fee as it was with Viator) . Trip was good but by the end he charged me 350 euro( 404 dollars), He lock me in a car, treated me with police, first time for all tour open charges on a meter. I had a no choice but to give him my credit card because our ship departure in a 30 minutes . Now I have to deal with disputes on a credit card. It is look like for me as a well organised scam between local tour operators and “ Quality taxi tour”( it is how this drivers sound on his Business card). Vaitor should be aware about this and never deal with this local company as well as with taxi drivers Michael Corcoran license K0433. Our vacation day at Cork, Ireland was very bad

Was an excellent tour of Blarney Castle and. Stonehenge. Would highly recommend! Our tour guide was very informative and gave us lots of free time to explore

Chose this tour because it was reasonably priced and included both Blarney Castle and Kinsale. You get 2 hours at each site (enough time in Kinsale, not really enough time at Blarney Castle if you want to kiss the Stone) plus a drive through Cork and a couple of stops in Cobh. As a shore excursion it shows you the best things around Cobh without seeming overly rushed. Our guide (Nile) was great. A natural raconteur who also gave us useful tips of things to do at each stop and explained what we were seeing on the drive. If you don't want to pay Cruise Line prices, this is a great (and probably better) option - at a very reasonable price.

We had a great time touring the castle and gardens. It is a beautiful site. Just be forewarned the allotted time at the castle does not give you enough time to do everything. The wait to kiss the Blarney Stone was for us about an hour, time to walk around the gardens is about 30-60 min depending on how much you want to see and if you want to go shopping you will need to allot time to walk to and from the store plus browsing time (super big store) to make sure you return to the bus on time. Our trip to Kinsdale was a little disappointing, there was no formal meeting site for the 30 min tour, we were told to start walking around the city and we would find a Butler tour guide, lol we did walk around but never saw a guide. The fish and chips place by the bus stop was only ok, next time I would opt to go further into the town area to find something better to eat. The town itself is beautiful and definitely worth exploring.

Blarney Castle was great. Wish we would’ve had more time in the Woollen Mills for shopping. Didn’t need the time in Kinsale as it was a small town with nothing much to do other than buying lunch. St Coleman‘s Cathedral was only 15 minutes but lovely to see and hear the bells.