Dublin arrival stay - Do NOT rent a car until you leave Dublin. Use Uber/Public Transportation

You're absolutely right about not wanting a car in Dublin. And you may not want to make that drive to Belfast when Aircoach will take you there from DUB in a couple of hours. If you drive a rental from DUB to Belfast, you'll want to bring it back to the Republic to drop it off, so you don't have a big international dropoff fee.

Happy Anniversary!

Almost all the car companies are adding L30 to rentals that cross the border as a "recovery fee" on top of the other ways they milk you for money. We were just in Ireland and the calculation of whether to drive to Belfast was pretty neutral - we were headed on to Ballycastle & Portrush before heading west, so it saved lots of time to take a car with us, and three days of parking in Belfast plus the car days were slightly less than an international dropoff fee.

You're absolutely right about not wanting a car in Dublin.

Or in any other European city for that matter. Or for going from one city to another. Experiencing the small villages in the country though - yes, then you might want a car.

Common sense regarding travel to any metropolitan city in the world.

Will say I have driven around Eire and in NI but that was in the 90’s. I did rent a car when I stayed outside Dublin but that was to drive through the Sally Gap and Wicklow mountains on my way to my accommodation in Arklow.

Also drove from LHR to Lyme Regis a few years back.

Taking a bus or the train to Belfast from Dublin is easy peasy. Have done both. Then stayed with friends in Belfast who had a flat in the Titanic Quarter.

We have to drive to Belfast because we are staying there and then a few other venues in the north, before making are way to Galway, then driving back to DUB for our return flight. As in past trips we wanted to fly back from Shannon instead of driving back to DUB, but, the Aer Lingus makes it difficult on our return date (only choice-early AM flight SNN to Heathrow- long layover - Heathrow to PHL). No way. We'll go with the 2+ hour drive Galway to DUB for a late afternoon flight non-stop to PHL.