Dublin - Public Transportation

Just curious - why would you have to exchange money every time you went into the city?? Given your choices, I would take the five day pass, simply because if your trip was seven days, you won't be using the longer one for all seven days. And a lot of Dublin is perfectly (and preferably) walkable.

We had lodging outside of Dublin and rode the bus which worked out very well. In town we also used the hop on/ hop off bus which was also fine. That said, 21 euros (approx $28) for 5 days seems like a lot. You'll have to add up your anticipated costs. As others have pointed out, a week in Dublin is a long time unless you attenting a function there.

I didn't mean exchange money - I meant use paper money or change on the bus. There will be 4 of us and that can be cumbersome and difficult. We are actually coming in Sunday at 0800 and leaving Friday morning. We will travel one day to the West coast. Our hotel is near the Gresham Hotel in the city center. Thank you - in looking at a map in more detail, many of the attractions we will visit are within 1000 m of our hotel or 2/3 of a mile. Totally walkable!

As Nancy said, a lot is walkable. Unless you're staying outside of city centre, you may not need a pass for every day that you're there. I'd figure out an itinerary and figure out which pass you need from there. As far as buying a pass goes, you can buy them from most shops (like Spar) and the bus stand in the airport. Passes are good if you're going to be using public transport that day, then you don't have to worry about having exact change every time you get on the bus. They've got a scanner inside the door, you just scan your pass.

My wife and I only rode the bus once when we were in Dublin. That was between the Kilmainham Gaol and Christ Church (by the Temple Bar). I think it was e1.30 or 1.50 each. The rest of the time we walked where we were going and enjoyed the walks. We stayed in Temple Bar so we were pretty centrally located. There are places out of the downtown area where you might use a bus to get in and a bus to get back every day. If that's the case and the passes cover the bus to/from the Dublin Airport, they would probably be marginally worthwhile. The better way to see the major sites would be the hop-on-hop-off bus. I'm in the "Dublin's nice but really only worth 2 or 3 days" camp. There's too much to see in the rest of Ireland and Dublin really is a second tier Eurpean capital as far as sights go.

My recollection is that you'll need exact change for the bus. The drivers don't make change on the city bus.