My wife and I will be in Dublin this weekend. She’s been there before, but I never have. Any recommendations on restaurants, pubs or other must-do things? I plan on checking out the Guinness brewery and Jameson’s distillery, but other than that, don’t have a strong desire to stick to touristy things.
If you feel like a nice manageable bite of historical stuff, check out the Little Museum of Dublin: http://www.littlemuseum.ie/
I recommend it. Two rooms, crammed with a mishmash of odd interesting stuff from the last hundred years or so of Dublin.
If you want more hardcore historical, go for the National Museum, which has brilliant historical/archaeological stuff.
Sticking around that area, Fire restaurant on Dawson Street does great steaks, and the Dawson Lounge is the smallest pub in Dublin.
Thanks, eclectic wench. We’ll check those out.
I’d recommend against doing both Guinness and Jameson’s unless you have literally too much time on your hands. It’s hard to explain, but they’re really similar. Sorta “commercialized Irish booze tour.” The Guinness one is a bit more memorable. The only high point I recall to the Jameson’s tour is the tasting at the end, and only a few folks on each group get to participate.
My absolute, 100% recommendation for a tourist in Dublin is Saint Michan’s Church. It’s a somewhat unremarkable, comparatively recent church. The interesting bit is underneath it – it’s built on the foundations of a much older cathedral, and the crypts below contain a handful of mummies (including at least one person of minor historical note). They do short tours of the crypts that are interesting, generally uncrowded, and utterly, utterly unique.
I also highly recommend seeing the library at Trinity College. It’s a bit touristy, but beautiful and interesting as well.
Check out the food market in Temple Bar on Saturday for some great oysters/Irish cheeses and the like. In the same area Cow’s Lane has some great shops and stalls.
Try to go to a decent trad session. The Cobblestone in Smithfield or (surprisingly) upstairs in Oliver St John Gogarty’s in Temple Bar. Make sure it’s the one upstairs though. Even for a cynical Dub I loved it.
Temple Bar can get a bit rowdy late at night. In fact, I would normally tell people to avoid it but it’s not without it’s charms…
The sun is actually shining this week and meant to continue through the weekend.
Have a lovely trip.
My boilerplate pub recommendation is Grogan’s on South William Street.
Seconded. It’s class.