You’ll be happy to know that the real Dublin experience is less about ticking off famous sights to see and is more about slowing down the pace so you can enjoy strolling your way around this small and compact capital city.
You’ll learn some history on the go as you come across statues and memorial plaques which will inform you about old times and more recent struggles.
There are plenty of places to stop by for a bite to eat and more bookshops than I’ve seen in a long time, where you can spend time and choose some books to take back home to stock up your library.
I pre-booked the visit to the Guinness Storehouse (which you must do as it gets busy) and the Irish music and dancing show at The Merry Ploughboy Gastro Pub (but you may as well book the night at The Belvedere Hotel as it’s closer).

Getting There

✈️Milan Bergamo to Dublin 2h 25m
We took the evening flight from Orio al Serio, landed in Dublin and took a bus outside the airport for a short ride to city centre. It took around 30 minutes. Cost €8. What did I notice straightaway? That the driver was super friendly and obliging with everyone. It was my first taste of that famous Irish trait- being nice and friendly seems to be just in their nature!

Our Hotel: THE BELVEDERE Great Denmark Street, Dublin

We arrived at the hotel after midnight to a big room with a soft plushy carpet, good size bathroom and a generous king-size bed and went straight to sleep.

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Saturday in Dublin

We indulged in a hearty and savoury full Irish breakfast of sausages, bacon, hash browns, and eggs. Later, we headed south from ‘The Belvedere’, along O’Connell Street (good for shops, restaurants and pubs), over the River Liffey, and towards Trinity College.

Trinity College

Trinity College

We bought tickets to see the Book of Kells. This is an illuminated manuscript of the Gospel handwritten by Irish monks more than a thousand years ago and decorated with rich colours and gold leaf. It’s a national treasure and I really wanted to see it.
In the end, you see only two pages of the book under safety glass and for a short time as there is a long queue of visitors waiting to see it too. To be honest, for us, the whole visit wasn’t worth it.
We preferred our visit to the Long Room of the Old Library at Trinity College, included in our ticket for the Book of Kells.
It is lined from top to bottom with dark wooden bookshelves and library ladders and decorated with shiny white marble busts. It has a great atmosphere and you could imagine it’s the sort of place where you’d find a book with a map to some secret treasure folded inside. Actually, most of the books have been removed for safekeeping and there are some surprisingly interesting videos on display showing how these books are cleaned, restored and stored away

During our visit we saw Gaia, a huge globe suspended from the ceiling and lit up with a projection of the Earth seen from space. Beautiful and calming.
It’s an art work by Luke Jerram and as you’re reading this, it will be on tour somewhere in the world.

Snack: coffee and buns at Bread 41
We got caught in a heavy rainstorm in the gardens of Trinity College and needed to warm up. We found this cosy, dark café which has an abundant selection of bread and pastries and lovingly-prepared coffee. If you lived in Dublin, I’m sure you’d be a regular here!

Bread 41

For the evening I booked an Irish night performance of traditional music and dancing at ‘The Merry Ploughboy Gastro Pub’, south of Dublin. It’s a real and authentic pub, but because it’s outside the city you’ll need to book the shuttle through them. FYI there are other places in the city that offer music nights, including our hotel.

I don’t think you can visit Dublin without going to a night of Irish music and dancing. It really connects you with the Irish culture—the crazy fast fiddle playing, the nostalgic ballads (The Irish Rover, Whiskey in the Jar, Molly Mallone), the cheeky and witty quips between the musicians. It’s a full-on experience. They will have you stomping your feet, singing along and swaying together to the music and, all in all, get you out of your shell and make you feel part of the family. Don’t worry, you won’t have to dance too! You can watch the dancers with their arms down by their sides as they do complicated dance steps and kicks in soft shoes or noisy clogs as the music accelerates, so does the dancing!

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Sunday in Dublin

Before everyone wakes up, go for a run in Phoenix Park. If you can…
National Gallery of Ireland
You can’t have a weekend away without a cultural pit stop. Again the staff are friendly and welcoming. It seems like they’ll soon be offering us a cup of tea. The permanent collection is varied and there’ll be something you like. My favourite was the pointillist painting The Terrace, Saint Tropez by Paul Signac—up close you can see every little dot that makes up the whole picture.

National Gallery of Ireland

National Gallery of Ireland

Lunch: Sprout & Co., Dawson Street.
If you ever need the motivation to eat super healthy, just come here! We each munched through a wrap with lean protein and various types of salad leaves and colourful chopped veggies and tasty toppings.

Sprout & Co.

Sprout & Co.

Browsing Hodges Figgis Bookshop at 58 Dawson Street. In business since 1768, with
changing locations and ownership, this bookshop is opposite Sprout & Co. and has four vast floors of books where you can happily lose yourself in time and space for a few hours.

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Monday in Dublin

We visited the Guinness Storehouse, the home of the famous thick dark brown beer with a creamy white top. I don’t really like the taste of Guinness, but I do enjoy learning about how things are made and this cool place will show you that. It’s set out on seven circular floors, each one wrapped around a central well, with a bar at the top and floor to ceiling windows giving views over the city.
At the top-floor bar, you can have a free Guinness or just a soft drink if you can’t manage the real thing. There’s not much space to sit at so you’ll likely end up sitting on the floor to have your guinness! I recommend coming here in the morning because it gets busy quite early.

Guinness Storehouse

Guinness Storehouse

Lunch: The Boxty House at 20-21 Temple Bar
As recommended by Phil on Netflix. A boxty is a sort of potato pancake made with mashed and shredded potatoes, mixed with buttermilk and then fried. The food was good, a bit pricey but you are in the heart of Temple Bar.

The Boxty House

Snack: Murphy’s Ice Cream at 27 Wicklow Street. Worth the hype. The ice cream is made with natural ingredients to make flavours that evoke Irish life: Brown Bread, Dingle Gin and Dingle Sea Salt among others. And with this we wrapped up our long weekend in Dublin and sat in the cosy foyer of the hotel until it was time to go back to the everyday with one more city visited and many more memories created.