Dublin, Ireland – what to visit

Hey hey! As you might have noticed I do love travelling. But I also love short weekend escapes. Especially during the warm part of the year I try to do at least one weekend trip per month. Well, in the summer I do it more than once per month, but this is another topic :D. Today I will tell you more about my short less-than-48h stay in Dublin, Ireland and what to visit while there.

My sister and I live in different countries and we try to organize some trips together in order to spend some quality sister time. This time we chose Dublin as we both had affordable flight tickets available.

To be honest I had no expectations. Northern European countries have never been in my bucket list, so I just decided to go and see. Dublin surprised me really positively! Honestly I really liked Dublin. I have imagined it like a rainy grey city, but in fact it is a rainy colorful city! 😀 Jokes aside, we spent there around 40h and it rained during 32 of them. This means that we couldn’t walk around as much as we wanted.

This is why we decided to explore the pubs/restaurants/bars that the city offers. Not that I am complaining, they have really good night life there!

Later I will recommend some places that we visited, but before that I would like to share some fun facts to know before you go there:

Did you know that they have another official language besides English? Well, I didn’t. Its name is Gaeilge or Gaelic Irish language. It is the first official language. Most of the signs are written in it. But everyone speaks English as well. And yes, they have really funny accent and sometimes it is hard to understand them.

They use euro there. Another blond moment of mine – being close to the UK I directly assumed that they use pound. Nope, they don’t. Embarrassing, isn’t it? 😀

But here is a thing they have in common – they use the same weird power sockets, so be prepared if you want to charge your phone

It really rains a lot, bring an umbrella

They do play traditional Irish music in most of the pubs there, it is so old school cool.

I hope you like beer, they have hundreds of different choices. The beer menu is sometimes few pages long!

Looking for an accommodation gives the impression that Dublin is a really expensive city! Hotels and even hostels options are super pricey. My recommendation is to book an AirBnb, it is half the price and you can find really good places to stay. Ours was located close to the Temple bar area,just 10 minute walk from there, here is the link for it.

Coming from the airport you can take bus 747 to the city center. The price of the ticket is 7 euro, 12 for return ticket. And the bus itself has 2 floors!

Given the fact that it was raining all the time and we had less than 48h in the city, we didn’t manage to see everything that the city could offer, but here are some interesting places that we’ve visited:

Guinness Storehouse

You cannot go to Dublin without visiting its main attraction! It is located really close to the city center and you can reach it by foot. They still produce the beer there! Tip – buy the ticket online in advance. It is cheaper (18 euros online, 25 euros at the cashier). The price also vary during the day, but it is cheaper to go in the morning. I would strongly recommend going in the morning. Not only because it is cheaper, but because it is emptier. We went at 9.30 and we had almost private experience compared to the crowd that we found on our way out.

The building has 7 floors:

On the first there is a gift shop. The ingredients used for the beer preparation occupy the rest of the floor.

On the second you can follow the whole production process and the machines they use

The rest of the floors are focused on history,advertisement, tasting room, where you can taste the original Guinness beer in a tiny glass.

In the end of the tour you can choose between a pouring Guinness workshop or having a beer in the 360 Gravity bar with views of Dublin on the 7^th floor. As you can imagine, I prefer having people pouring my drink instead of doing it myself, so we chose the second option. And it was a rooftop bar after all! To be honest having a Guinness beer at 11h in the morning for breakfast was quite early even for me, but… YOLO as kids say today:D

Trinity college

This is one of the most prestigious universities in Ireland and one of the best in Europe. We didn’t go inside, I am not sure if you can enter if you are not a student, but we walked around its yard. The grass was sooo green!

Dublin castle

It was a good option for a rainy day as our was. Unfortunately we had limited time and we didn’t want to waste it in museums. But we visited the yard though. 😀

Molly Malone’s monument

This one we found by chance. Molly Malone is the unofficial anthem of Dublin. The statue you can find on Suffolk Street.

Christ Church Cathedral

It is a beautiful building! It connects with Dublinia by an arc over one of the main roads. Dublinia is a museum for kids.Both of them are in greyish colors as many of the buildings in Dublin.

George’s street arcade

It is located close to Molly Malone’s statue, it is a market where you can find a lot of shops and food places. We bought our souvenirs from there, they had good offers. As you can imagine everything is in green!

Ha’penny bridge

The original name is the Wellington Bridge (called after the Dublin-born Duke of Wellington), the name of the bridge changed to Liffey Bridge.Ha’penny comes from half penny or the tax that was collected from the citizens who wanted to cross the bridge. Before building it there were ferries connecting the two sides of the river and the price for the ride was half penny.

Temple bar

This is the most iconic bar of Dublin. It is extremely crowded all day long. There are live bands playing, several rooms and really fun environment. As a typical Irish bar it is super loud and crowded and was not our cup of tea, but we went inside just to see the environment, it is a must see after all!

The whole area around the bar is full of cool pubs so you can easily pick a less crowded one. It is also a super nice area to walk around– colorful and unique.

Dame court street

It is a really nice area with a lot of pubs.It is beautifully decorated with a lot of flags and makes the rainy days brighter.

There are few more things to visit while in Dublin, but you definitely need more time and better weather to do so. For the rest of our stay in Dublin we did what we like the most – exploring local food and drinks.

Lucky us Dublin offers huge variety of restaurants and pubs that are worth visiting, actually to be honest I regret not having more time to visit more. As my sister said – having a bad weather has its advantages. Irish people are forced to stay dry so they got creative in opening cool places to eat and drink! 😀

Here is my list of recommendations:

Brunch places :

Urbanity – this one is a bit far from the old town, on the other side of the river, but was really cool. I was surprised how crowded it was on a Sunday morning. It is a bit pricey (as most of the brunch places in Dublin) , but the food was delicious

Two pups coffee – hipster style. Has several rooms, looks like an old house,very cozy. The prices again are not low, but it is cheaper than the 1^stone.

Places to eat and drink ( pubs or restaurants) :

The VAT house bar – our first pub in Dublin! It is close to the Temple bar area and it is absolutely traditional Irish pub. Surprisingly the prices in the restaurants were absolutely normal, if you compare it to the accommodation offers, it is actually cheap. You can have a decent meal for 9-15 euros per person depending on what you want to eat. The beer menu is quite long. Beers are a bit more expensive than usual, but the quality is also high. Original Guinness beer costs around 7-8 euros.

Bison – a friend of my sister recommended the restaurant. We went there for pork ribs, but I had chicken wings. It is located by the river, it is a restaurant rather than a pub.

The Porterhouse bar – there we went for drinks only, the beer menu is huuuuge! It has several floors and really good vibe.

There are many more that looked really cool, but unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to explore more. Dublin has amazing night life and people definitely know how to have fun and to enjoy themselves. People are polite and friendly and always try to help you with their funny accent. I would love to go back again and see more or Ireland, looks like a country that could offer a lot.

My weekend escape just ended.

See you soon when Travelista goes to…

P.S. More European destinations you can find in my travel section.