A bit of background regarding my request: My ex-wife lives in Moscow, I live in the Netherlands, our daughter stays with her mother in Moscow. As you can imagine, it is not exactly easy to see each other even remotely often.
Our daughter, Tanya, who is 13, is spending some weeks in Dublin in order to attend an English language course. I am hopping over to be with her for a while --the opportunity is excellent to see her with a minimum of bureaucratic fuss over visas and whatnot! Also, the plane tickets are cheaper
I will be going to Dublin on the 21st of this month (saturday). I wanted to ask my fellow Irish dopers for pointers, information and suggestions about places to go / things to do in Dublin as father and daughter, with a 13-year old girl.
You can go see the Jedi Archives from the recent Star Wars prequels. Granted, it looks a little different in person, but it was filmed there and I thought it was pretty amazing. If you go see the Book of Kells, the library is part of the tour. That’ll kill an hour or so!
I would have said Trinity College, but I’m not sure how much appeal that would have to a 13 year old girl. Maybe some Dopers with teenage children can answer a bit better.
Aw hell, drag the kid to Trinity College. It’s all kinds of awesome. At least check out the Trinity College harp and the Book of Kells. Boo on them if they can’t appreciate it. I would have when I was 13.
dublin has - or had, assuming nothing’s changed in ten years - an inter-city bus system that will take you all over. you could buy an all-day pass or short-hop passes and travel from place to place to place all day. in fact, you could plan what you wanted to see just from the bus schedule alone.
it beats driving in dublin, which to an american tourist accustomed to new york and chicago traffic, was terrifying. i thought our american big city drivers were crazy? irish drivers are barking mad behind the wheel!
Was coming in to recommend this. It’s the only Dublin attraction other than the boozers that I absolutely recommend to visitors. Great fun and rather unique.
There are loads of hop on/hop off bus tours that do a circuit of the city. Depending on the weather one of those might be worth taking. If it’s, as it probably will be, raining I wouldn’t recommend it though.
Museum of Ireland’s Archaeology branch is within walking distance of the big tourist area. It is very cool with some bog bodies and gold artifacts and an interesting history of Ireland. The Natural History museum is pretty good too- a zoo of stuffed animals. Neither are enormous but both are pretty well done.
