Cliffs of Moher and Galway Day Tour

Typically about two hours, usually on the way home and usually as free time rather than a guided walk. Galway is compact and walkable from wherever the coach parks, so two hours genuinely buys you something: the Latin Quarter, lunch or a pint, the Spanish Arch and the river. It is not long enough to know the city and it is comfortably long enough to enjoy it. Against the alternative - two more hours of motorway - it is not a close contest.

Because six hours of driving is unavoidable on this route, and Galway is the most useful thing to put in them. It reads like padding and it is the opposite: an itinerary that adds nothing to the drive is not a shorter day, it is the same day with less in it. Galway sits roughly on the way, it is the best small city in the west, and a two-hour stop turns dead motorway time into part of the trip. The tours that skip it substitute Ennis, Limerick or Bunratty for the same reason.

Some operators allow it, but check before booking rather than assuming. It is a common request and a sensible one - if you are heading west anyway, being dropped in Galway saves you three hours of backtracking. It is not universally offered and is rarely mentioned in the listing, so ask the operator directly. If your plan is to base yourself in the west, note that the local bus along the coast makes the cliffs easy from Galway without any tour at all.

No, and there are itineraries built for exactly that. Departures that swap the city for Ennis and Limerick, or that add Bunratty Castle, give you a different slice of the west for the same money and the same hours. There is no reason to spend two hours revisiting a city you know when the alternative costs the same. Those routes are less common than the Galway ones, so they are worth looking for deliberately.

No - the cliffs get about two hours on virtually every Dublin departure, Galway stop or not. That allocation is fixed by the driving distance rather than by the rest of the itinerary. Adding Galway does not eat into clifftop time; it fills the return leg. If you want more than two hours at the cliffs, no Dublin day tour will provide it, and the honest answer is to stay in the west overnight instead of shopping for a different coach.

Walk the Latin Quarter, eat, and see the Spanish Arch - in that order. The centre is small enough that two hours covers it without rushing. Shop Street and Quay Street run through the middle with the street musicians the city is known for; the Spanish Arch and the Corrib are five minutes further. Most coaches park within a short walk. It is a good use of two hours precisely because Galway is compact - the same stop in a larger city would be pointless.