3 days in Dublin - short notice itinerary help please!

Do visit Book of Kells in the Trinity Old Library and Kilmainham Gaol. You also want to download Rick Steves app and follow his two self-guided walking tours that will nearly complete your list.

Hi MaryPat,

Yes, those are in the plans! We just really need some help on how to group these.

PS: I should also mention we're not interested in the Wicklow Mountains or Newgrange; while they are likely quite popular for a reason, they are not of interest to us (at least for this trip).

What time is your Kilmainham Gaol tour? It is more or less the outlier on your list. If it's early or late, i would combine it with
City Hall, Dublin Castle, St. Patrick's Cathedral (you don't need a tour, just walk in and have a look) and Christ Church, all of which are kind of in the same direction as Kilmainham Gaol and pretty close to each other. I'm basing that suggestion on the assumption you will take a taxi. We were running late for Kilmainham Gaol and didn't risk public transit.

Molly Malone, Grafton St., St. Stephen's Green and Stephen's Green Shopping Centre, George's Arcade, Temple Bar are all in the same area. Drop pins on Google map to figure out how you want to order them.

You will walk across O'Connell St. to get to Trinity College. Or walk across the Ha'Penny Bridge to get to Temple Bar. Or walk south on one and north on the other (or vice versa).

EPIC Museum is on the north side of the River Liffey. Also an outlier on your itinerary and in the opposite direction of Jameson's. I never tried to buy any in Dublin since I can buy it in the US.

The Book of Kells, which includes the old upstairs library, will require pre-booking. Except for Kilmainham and EPIC, all your sights are within about a square mile, and many of them are simply walk-bys or walk-throughs unless you want to spend more time. A map with pins, as suggested above, will give you a walking route. Rick Steves' South Dublin walk here (bottom of page) will take you to most of them.

I know you don't want additional ideas, but I do suggest you go into both Christ Church and St. Patrick's Cathedrals for the exhibits and interior architecture. And you might also consider the National Archeological Museum, not far from Trinity College, though it will take awhile.

Totally agree with Christ Church especially the crypt. The history of the church is worthwhile reading about as the site is over 1000 year s old. The crypt has many ancient artifacts and I read you are not interested in museums but this is so very different. Also.be sure to go into the GPO the site of much of the Rebellion fighting. I think you can still see bullet holes. Best of luck.

If you're still there on Sunday afternoon, The Brazen Head has a good afternoon (3:30pm) afternoon session of trad.

We missed it on our last trip, but I'm adding the Little Museum of Dublin to our trip next Spring.

The Gaol is pretty cool we liked it

When you’re there go to the Franciscan well for a beer It’s relatively close by and has an awesome beer garden

You are all making me feel much better about this! Thank you so much. We tend to take our time and don't like feeling rushed to get to the next spot of the day so I was worried this was too much in 3 days.

Seems like it's not! I'll give it another shot and come back to see if it works.

Trotter, the gaol is at 930 so it will be the first stop of the day.

Dick, I will definitely be booking the book of Kells, likely the first slot on the Saturday.

As for budgeting time, do these sound about right for a leisurely but not intensely in depth experience?

Gaol- 2 hours
Library- 1 hour
Dublin Castle - 2 hours
Epic & Jeanie - 3 hours
Cathedrals- 1 hour each?
George's Arcade - 1.5 hours
Stephen's Green & Shopping Center- 1.5 hours
Grafton St - 1.5 hours
O'Connell St - 1.5 hours
Temple Bar - 1.5 hours

Are you saying we can enter the Cathedrals without paying for a tour?

We might be a bit "churched-out" after our England trip in April so I wasn't sure these two were worth exploring. Maybe they are?

Any other suggestions are all much appreciated. 19 days to go!!

Honestly I’d probably cut out almost all the churches if you’re coming from England.

We had 4 nights in Dublin and 2019 and probably did less than half of what you did and I was more than satisfied. Personally I’d probably swap out some of the church/historic sites and go visit the Guinness factory.

Even if you don’t drink it’s a cool, bordering on Disneyland type experience inside (I can’t remember but I think they have a dark ride there? Lol)

We did trinity college and the library/book of kels, the Gaol, temple bar, Guinness, whiskey tastings at whiskey library, and generally just walking around and eating/drinking and I felt that was about right. I’m generally not one to tell people to do less than they think they are capable of because I find this forum and many others seem to promote this snails pace of travel, but I’d definitely consider cutting a couple things out of yours and just taking it at a bit more leisurely pace.

When you say "Library" do you mean the Chester Beatty? If so, I would budget more than 1 hour. I found it fascinating. YMMV

And what do you really plan on doing as you walk along O'Connell St? Are you going to the GPO? Shopping? If the latter, there isn't that much. Similarly, what do you plan on doing in Temple Bar, Grafton Street, George's Arcade, etc. There's only a few shops in those areas worth going into and Temple Bar is just something to say you walked through unless you're doing a pub crawl.

As far as churches are concerned, no, you don't have to pay to walk around them if you don't take a tour, but I always pay to light a candle for my parents and put something in the donation box. Just seems the right thing to do.

Trotter,

By library (maybe that's not the right term) I mean the Trinity College Library and Book of Kells.

If we pop into the churches we will be lighting candles for our relatives who've passed as well and leaving a donation of course. I was asking because on our trip to England we couldn't do that unless going for a service or buying tickets at Westminster or St Paul's so I wanted to know if it was different here.

In those areas you mentioned we're hoping to just meander through them, stop at any interesting shops, grab a snack or lunch, stop and listen to buskers if there are any (?), take pictures etc.

The cathedrals in Dublin are very interesting but not in a league with St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey. As I recall there were donation boxes and I left a few euros. There was a free tour of St. Patricks which I found interesting, but I'm a church fan.

Dublin Castle will take you about an hour at most. Several of your other stops will take less time than you've allotted, unless you're into shopping as an activity. I know you're the Planning Queen, and I respect your royal prerogatives, but you may be overthinking this hour-by-hour stuff, Your Majesty. ;-)

Hahaha Dick!

Yes, I tend to overthink things when I'm stressing about it 🙃.

Your comment is exactly what I needed to hear, though. Good to know we'll have enough time.

The hour by hour is just to make sure I'm not overloading one day or underestimating the time needed to enjoy something to the fullest.

I greatly underestimated the time needed for Westminster Abbey (we stayed and it was fabulous) which threw off a couple things so I thought I should make sure I didn't do the same thing here.

Thanks for all your help!

PQ

EPIC and Jennie seem about right adding the Famine Memorial. I think the boat portion took about a 1/2 hour then straight into EPIC. We took the the red line from the Gaol to EPIC. A bit of a hike from Goal to the tram so the taxi option might be best. As others have said a bunch in the middle of your list are grouped together so would just be a day walking tour from one to the other.

Thank you so much everyone! I've got it all figured out now.

2 weeks to go!!

PQ