In May we’ll be flying into Dublin, and want to build in some time there prior to the start of a 2 week trip across Ireland. The 2 weeks are almost completely planned, but the Dublin stay is still a bit of a question mark. How many nights should we plan for? We were initially thinking 4, but are now wondering whether that’s too much time?
We’ll likely be arriving early in the morning after a red eye flight. Customarily we spend much of our post-flight day walking around and looking at sights, but don’t attempt to do much touring. So that’s one whole day, but only kinda-sorta. We’ll be taking a train to Galway the morning of either day 4 (3 full days in Dublin, including the kinda-sorta day) or day 5 (4 full days in Dublin including the kinda-sorta day).
We’ve been to Dublin before, and spent about 3 days, but it was almost 15 years ago, and we were traveling with an 11 year old, which somewhat limited what we saw and did. Just adults this time around. I’m thinking a good walking tour/history tour would be great; a visit to Trinity College and the book of Kells; maybe a museum or two? I’d like to revisit Kilmainham Gaol and visit the Guinness Brewery, even though it’s a tourist trap. We definitely want to visit pubs and listen to music in the evenings. I’m not really interested in taking day trips from Dublin— on our last visit we did a fantastic full day hiking trip in the Wicklow Mountains— because we’ll be doing a fair amount of touring scenic places on the remainder of the trip.
I’d love itinerary suggestions as well as your opinions about how many days we should plan to stay. Thanks!