I want to take 2-3 weeks and go to Ireland, do the backpacking & sight-seeing thing. Ireland because it's been on my list and I heard good things. But then I looked at the map, and Scotland is very close and I search-engine'd Edinburgh and it said good things about it too, so what would you advise me to do?

I know there's tons of travel blogs and forums and I'll be reading all of those too - yet I've come to trust the advice of people on this board.

EDIT: Ok, it's definitely Ireland, hands down. Also how come it's twice the cost to fly to Edinburgh?? So strange. Now my decision is how much time to spend there. I'll do one 7-day tour around Ireland. So I'm leaning towards 3 weeks.