Must do's in Dublin area before our RS Best of Ireland tour starts?

What’s part of the tour?

What to visit and do depends on your interests, but here are places I enjoyed in 2016 and recommend:

GPO: Witness History
GPO, O’Connell Street, Dublin 1. Daily, 9am-5.30pm. Tickets €10 adults, €5 children; family tickets from €25. Other discounts available. Booking advised; gpowitnesshistory.ie

Tells the story of the 1916 rebellion. I went to the 2 p.m. individual guided tour without advanced booking.

If you go to the GPO, you can see where actual combat took place (ie look for bullet holes) and you can go inside the post office for a look around and to purchase stamps.

This was a fascinating visit and tour and it pairs well with Kilmainham Gaol Museum (which is on the tour I believe)

National Museum of Ireland: the Archaeology Museum is outstanding and free (there is also a Decorative Arts Museum that I didn’t get to visit; museum.ie

W.B. Yeats exhibit in National Library. Dubray Books on Grafton Street (good bookstore and café/coffe shop).

Dublin Castle https://www.dublincastle.ie/

It’s fun to walk around the streets and cross the bridges over the river Iffley, including the Ha’Penny bridge. Lots of shops and places to eat

I didn’t get to these sites, but they were highly recommended by others as I was planning my trip.

EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum https://epicchq.com/

Dublin Literary Pub Crawl.

Dublinia Viking Museum https://www.dublinia.ie

It’s very hands-on and you learn a lot about Viking Ireland.

Jeanie Johnston Famine Ship https://jeaniejohnston.ie/

For night life and music:

Temple Bar is wild, but fairly safe. NOTE: there have been some attacks on tourists and the State Department has issued a security alert:

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/ireland/us-embassy-in-dublin-issues-security-alert

Gogarty’s Pub has Trad music upstairs, regular downstairs. There are lots of pubs and you can listen to the music from the street to decide if you want to go in.
http://www.gogartys.ie/music/

Here are old threads about pubs that don’t get as many tourists and are outside of Temple Bar.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/ireland/not-so-well-touristed-pubs-in-dublin

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/ireland/trad-music-in-dublin-outside-of-temple-bar

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/ireland/best-pubs-in-dublin-for-food-and-traditional-irish-music

All the best,

Raymond

While we were in Dublin before heading up to N Ireland, we enjoyed:

1. Dublin Castle
2. GPO
3. Walking along the River Liffey
4. Folklore and Folk Ways story telling at Brazen Head Pub for dinner
5. St Patrick's Cathedral
6. Christ Church Cathedral
7. Garden of Remembrance
8. Marion Square Park
9. St Stephen's Green Park
10. Grabbing a Guinness at a local pub
11. Grabbing fish and chips
12. Trinity College student-led tour

Some others not mentioned in the previous posts:

• Guinness Storehouse Experience - not a factory tour, per se, but you do get to see how it’s made via slick multimedia exhibits ,and you’ll have a pint waiting for you at the end.

• Little Museum of Dublin - It’s exactly that, a little museum that’s about Dublin, and it’s charming. A guide gives you an entertaining tour through the exhibits.

• Leprechaun Museum (currently closed for renovation, but I don’t know when you’ll be there) - I genuinely enjoyed this! It’s very much about the folklore of leprechauns and storytelling. It’s another museum that you are guided through by entertaining guides.

And one offbeat thing: the relics of St. Valentine are buried at Whitefriar Street Church.

Have a great trip!

I've been to Dublin four times and five times overall to Ireland. I'll mention four key things that are not commonly known.

Dublin Writer's Museum: https://www.dublin.info/writers-museum/ This is the best of at least 15 literary museums I have seen.

See a play at the Gate Theater: https://www.gatetheatre.ie/. I saw A Christmas Carol at the Gate in 2002. I was practically bawling at the end because the performance was so moving. I've also seen a performance at the Abbey Theater, but the performance at the Gate was the superior.

Go to an Evensong service at Christ Church Cathedral: https://www.choralevensong.org/uk/christ-church-cathedral-dublin-280.php. I also saw this in 2002. It's an Anglican church, and I'm Catholic, but the difference denominations didn't matter to me.

Schedule a tour of Glendalough via the Dublin Tourist Information office downtown. Glendalough is a monastic site about 25 miles of so south of Dublin. Some of the antiquities are around 1,000-plus years old.

The rest of the stuff I'd recommend is available in Rick's guide book.

I am a big fan of EPIC: The Irish Emmigration Museum, if that is not part of your RS tour trip I would encourage you to visit there. It's one of the best museums I've visited.

All good suggestions here but our favorite was the National Archeological Museum which will be very close to your hotel if you are staying at Buswell’s Hotel.

Thanks all! Appreciate the thought and time behind your responses.

I’ll second the Epic and The National Museum of Ireland for Archaeology. A lot of our group enjoyed the Guinness tour. It’s a lot of money and a lot of people for a very commercialized tour. The best part, imo, was a pint at the and a great view. I also agree that the Little Museum of Dublin was “charming.” When we were there in July, Riverdance was there. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to attend so it’s still on my list of things to see.