dublin

Once you arrive, you will go through passport control. If you are traveling on a single ticket to your final destination, you won't have to retrieve and recheck your bag, but if you are changing airlines you will. It's about 30 minutes into town. Tourist venues won't be open that early, but you might take a hop-on, hop-off bus tour to get an overview of the city. It takes about 90 minutes to make the whole circuit, and then you can get off anywhere that looks interesting. Don't forget to allow that 30 minutes or so to get back to the airport. And when you come back, you need to allow at least two hours for the security and check-in process. So, to recap, about 3 of your hours will be spent just getting to and from town and checking in for your next flight. That still leaves you some usable time in town.

Take the Dublin bus into town, grab a bite and a cuppa at Bewley's on Grafton street, walk up to Trinity College and see the Book of Kells. Check opening times on their website. Usually 9:30am. Continue on over the river to O'Connell Street and the General Post Office then back track and have picnic lunch in St. Stephen's Green, great people watching. Then back to the airport.

Priscilla, I was in a similar situation back in May. Our flight arrived around 645am After going through the whole "you're in a new country" formalities and going to the ladies' room to freshen up after the long flight, it was after 8am. But using Rick's Ireland book, I picked a few places that we might like to see in Dublin, mapped out a walking route of it, and pretty much was able to see most of the city core and some interesting sites in about 4-5 hours.
We took the bus to O'Connell Street (about a 30 minute ride) and explored that street and the many shops (go to Penney's. Stuff like is 3 euro) We walked south and over the river on the bridge, walked to Grafton Street, posed with the Molly statue, found our way to the National Museum of Archeology, and wandered in there for an hour or so (it didn't open until 10 so we had to wait when we first got there). It's free as well as the other National Museums. Wandered back to Grafton Street and window shopped a bit, wandered to Chester Beatty Library to see the exhibits (the one on religion is fantastic), wandered around there and checked out Dublin Castle. Wandered some more. Wandered back over the river and to our bus stop that took us right to the airport. There was some eating mixed in with the wandering also. It wasn't an award winning day in Dublin, but it was great and we got to see lots for the short time we were there. Better than sitting in an airport for 9 hours...

Thanks to all of you for your great information. I feel so fortunate to have found this web sight.
You have all given me great info which I will definetly utilize. I do plan to go for a cuppa and maybe a "brew". Priscilla