Brad Mills

Review of Hylands Burren Hotel

I came here with my 9 year old daughter to see the...

I came here with my 9 year old daughter to see the beauty of West Ireland and we were not disappointed.

The main drawbacks were that the WIFI was very bad and there was no AC.

Ballyvaughan is a beautiful gem, close to the Cliffs of Moher, a few castles, The Burren Birds of Prey Center, some caves, and plenty of other really fun history filled activities for all ages.

The hotel staff at the Hylands Burren Hotel were extremely friendly and accommodating, they arranged for a bag of laundry to be cleaned for us & they gave my daughter a bowl of ice cream the night we arrived.

There is a comfy breakfast area where they serve a free continental breakfast as well as hot meals - lots of options.

The Full Irish was good but the avocado & egg bowl was amazing, I ve never tried anything like that in Canada! If you stay here, try the different breakfast menu options.

After an evening stroll down to the harbour to watch the swans, donkeys & ponies, there s a bar to sit down & relax for the evening.

I was shocked at how expensive the tiny bottles of pop are here. 3 euro for 100 ml of ginger ale or Coca Cola. The tiny bottles are pretty novel though, get one for the instagram shot.

The bar has seating outside for enjoying the village ambiance & nice weather, there is a sculptured water pump & flower display across the street where folks often stopped to water the plants.

The hotel is centrally located, everything you need is a short walk away. However if you are after views, you ll want to book closer to the water...this hotel is too close to other buildings & businesses to really soak in the countryside & ocean views.

Past the bar there s a restaurant where they serve a full lunch & dinner menu. We ate dinner and my daughter and I both enjoyed our meals.

Through the hotel there are scattered common sitting areas with fireplaces or woodstoves to relax and unwind, read a book or just have conversations.

A pain point was that this hotel has no air conditioning. We stayed in July & the heat was made worse by staying on the second floor. Our room had a window with a small breeze & we were able to ask the front desk for a fan which helped us stay cool enough to sleep without much discomfort.

I found most of the hotels in Ireland had no air conditioning, of the 6 hotels we stayed at, including one of them where we paid $800 a night, only 1 had AC.

Most people coming here are not going to care about the wifi, this picturesque village attracts people who are looking to escape from technology, for good reason.

However, they do advertise free wifi, so they should provide usable wifi. Speeds maxed out for me at 0.5 mbps, it wasn t even enough bandwidth to browse social media, never mind watch Netflix or do any sort of streaming.

The room size was decent and the 2 beds were comfortable. The window had to stay open the whole time, and since there s no screen, we had a few spiders crawl in.

The skylight window was nice and large, but our view was of the employees of the neighbouring restaurant taking a smoke break out back.

I wished there was a view of the ocean or the mountains, but unfortunately most of the view in our room was obstructed.

The bathroom was spacious, but the toilet paper was very cheap 1 ply stuff. When you are staying at a place like this, you don t expect to see toilet paper from a government building. I ve stayed in motels that spend more on their TP.

Secondly, they use an old outdated faucet system where one faucet is scalding hot, and the other is cold. So you actually have to put the plug in the sink & fill it up to wash hands.

The shower pressure was good, but the tub looked a bit too grimy for me to want to give my daughter a bath in it.

They did not provide facecloths, I had to use a hand towel as a face cloth.

Overall we had a really great time in Ballyvaughan, and if you are looking for a countryside escape & don t care about wifi or AC, you ll have an awesome time here.