DUBLIN · IRELAND
A pint, a page, and the whole island.
The Guinness Storehouse, the Book of Kells and Temple Bar after dark, then the Cliffs of Moher, Glendalough and the Causeway coast by day. Dublin’s tours and the big days out across Ireland, reviewed.
Only here
The pint, the page, and the edge of Europe.
Every city has a brewery, a library and a coastline. Only one pours the black stuff where it was invented, keeps a gospel older than most living languages, and runs out at a seven-hundred-foot cliff over the open Atlantic.
St James’s Gate
A pint at the source
You can drink Guinness anywhere. You can only pour it where it is brewed at St James’s Gate, ride seven storeys up through the old fermentation house and settle a glass at the Gravity Bar with the whole city laid out below. A 250-year lease on a brewery, and the best classroom in Ireland for the two-part pour.
- 1 Dublin: Guinness Storehouse Entry Ticket
- 2 Guinness Storehouse Experience
- 3 Dublin Jameson Distillery and Guinness Storehouse Guided Tour
Trinity College
The Book of Kells
In the heart of Trinity College sits a gospel book monks lettered and gilded around the year 800, so fine the detail still defies the eye. Upstairs runs the Long Room, two hundred thousand old volumes under a barrel-vaulted ceiling. No other city keeps a manuscript this old in a library this beautiful, free to walk straight into.
- 1 Dublin Book of Kells, Castle and Molly Malone Statue Guided Tour
- 2 Dublin: Fast-Track Book of Kells Ticket & Dublin Castle Tour
- 3 St Patrick’s Cathedral, Book of Kells and Dublin Castle Tour
The Wild Atlantic Way
The Cliffs of Moher
Three hours west the land simply stops, falling seven hundred feet into the open Atlantic with nothing beyond but the next parish in America. It is the single most-booked day out of Dublin, and on a clear afternoon, with the wind off the ocean and the Aran Islands on the horizon, it earns it.
- 1 Dublin to Cliffs of Moher, including Wild Atlantic Way and Galway
- 2 From Dublin: Cliffs of Moher, Burren & Galway City Day Tour
- 3 Dublin to Cliffs of Moher, Burren, Wild Atlantic Way, Galway Tour
The one everyone books
Dublin’s most-booked day out.
More travellers reserve this than anything else on the site. If you lock in only one thing before you land, make it this one.
The classics
Dublin’s Most Popular Tours & Tickets
Cliffs of Moher runs, the Guinness Storehouse, whiskey tastings and the hop-on hop-off buses. The days most visitors book first.
Where to begin
The days a Dublin trip is built around.
The Cliffs of Moher, the Guinness Storehouse, the whiskey distilleries, the Causeway coast, Glendalough and the Book of Kells. The handful of guides most Dublin trips are planned around, and the best of each.
Dublin is your basecamp
Which way out of the city?
Dublin is small and the island is the draw, so most visitors hand a day or two to a trip out of town. They run in three directions. Here is what lies west, south and north, and who each one suits.
Uisce beatha
The water of life.
For a while Dublin almost lost its whiskey, and then it came roaring back. Tour the old Jameson distillery on Bow Street, watch new spirit run at Teeling, the first to open in the city in over a century, and finish nosing the difference between pot still, malt and grain across a tasting flight. Triple-distilled, smooth as you like, and best learned with a glass in hand.
Read the guide: whiskey distillery tours →An hour south
The Garden of Ireland.
The Wicklow mountains rise almost from the edge of the suburbs. At their heart sits Glendalough, a sixth-century monastic city of round tower and twin lakes folded into a glacial valley, with heathered passes, hidden waterfalls and the odd film location on the road in. The closest the city comes to true wilderness, and an easy half-day.
See the Wicklow day trips →Across the border
North to the Giant’s Causeway.
Forty thousand basalt columns stepping into the sea, the beech tunnel of the Dark Hedges, Dunluce Castle on its crag, and Belfast with the slipways where the Titanic was built. A long day each way from Dublin, two hours of it in another country, and the most dramatic coastline on the island at the end of it.
Browse the Causeway day trips →On the bay
Sea cliffs, a half-hour from town.
Ride the DART to the end of the line and Howth is a working fishing harbour with a cliff loop pinned to its side. Walk the heather path high above the water to the Baily lighthouse, look across to the island of Ireland’s Eye, take a boat out to the seals and the seabird colonies, and come back down to seafood straight off the pier. The easiest swap of city for coast there is.
- 1 From Dublin: Half-Day Guided Coastal Tour to Howth Village
- 2 Howth Coastal Half-Day Bus Tour from Dublin with Live Guide
- 3 Dublin: Howth Coastal Boat Tour
Dublin after dark
A few pints, a session, and a story.
The night is where Dublin shows off. A guided crawl through the snugs of the old town, a trad session where the fiddle and bodhran start up in the corner with no warning, a literary pull around the pubs that Joyce and Behan drank dry, and a ghost walk through lanes with a darker past than the singing lets on. Wherever you start, you finish later than you meant to.
See all 19 pub crawls & sessions →Beyond the city
Six day trips, one basecamp.
The cliffs and Galway for the Wild Atlantic. Wicklow and Glendalough for the mountains. The Causeway and Belfast for the north. Howth for the sea air, Blarney and Cork for the castle, and the Boyne Valley for tombs older than the pyramids.
By experience
Or pick how to spend it.
A walking tour if you want the stories. A whiskey tasting or a food tour if you want the flavour. Hop-on hop-off if you want to cover ground, a Liffey cruise if you want the water, and museums, ghost walks and pub crawls for the rest.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
First time in Dublin? A long weekend that gives you the city, the mountains and the Wild Atlantic coast.
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