Dublin: 10 Days Between Work and Wandering

Trip Overview

The family flew home to SFO from Paris. I flew to Dublin.

Ten days total: personal time before work meetings kicked in for the final three. April in Ireland means rain, mild temperatures, and a city that doesn’t slow down for either. Base was a studio apartment in the city center — a short walk from Trinity College in one direction and the Docklands in the other.

Structure: Exploration (Days 1–6), work meetings (Days 7–9), departure (Day 10)

Best Time to Visit: April is good — shoulder season, fewer tourists than summer, and the city still has that lived-in pace. Bring a waterproof layer. Always.

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Day 1: Arrival from Paris

A morning flight from CDG — short, easy immigration. Dublin airport is straightforward — the Airlink bus drops you in the city center in about 40 minutes.

The apartment: A studio apartment near Pearse Street, close to the city center proper. Good base — kitchen included, which matters on a 10-day trip.

First afternoon:

• Walk down toward the River Liffey to orient
• Cross the Ha’penny Bridge — the classic iron footbridge, still the best way to cross between north and south
• Walk along Temple Bar and then cut up toward Grafton Street
• Cloud Picker on Pembroke Street for coffee — the one I ended up coming back to most of the trip

Evening:

• Low-key dinner close to the apartment — the first night after a flight and a week in Paris is not the night to be ambitious
• Early night. The next nine days will fill themselves.

Tips:

• The Leap Card is Dublin’s transit card — works on buses, DART, and Luas trams. Get one at the airport or any Centra/Spar
• The city center is walkable in a way that makes taxis mostly unnecessary if you’re based well

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Day 2: Trinity College & Georgian City Center

Morning:

• Trinity College — walk the front square, see the Long Room and the Book of Kells. The Long Room is one of those library spaces that justifies the visit on its own — 200,000 volumes, barrel-vaulted ceiling, and a silence that feels deliberate
• Book the Book of Kells timed entry in advance; the Long Room tickets are the same

Afternoon:

• Grafton Street and St. Stephen’s Green — the park is a good mid-afternoon reset
• National Museum of Ireland (Archaeology) on Kildare Street — free admission. The Iron Age gold collection and the Viking Dublin exhibits are the reason to go. Plan 90 minutes.
• Walk through Merrion Square — Dublin’s finest Georgian square, with Oscar Wilde’s reclining statue in the corner and uniform four-story brick terraces on every side

Evening:

• Kehoe’s on South Anne Street — a proper Victorian pub, unchanged since the 1900s. The snugs still work as snugs. Order Guinness.
• Dinner in the city center — the area around Drury Street and Fade Street has a range of good options

Tips:

• Trinity Long Room sells out — book a week in advance during spring
• The National Gallery is right next to Merrion Square and has a strong Caravaggio (The Taking of Christ) — worth combining with a garden walk

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Day 3: National Gallery & Georgian Quarter

Morning:

• National Gallery of Ireland — Caravaggio’s Taking of Christ is the centerpiece but the Irish collection — Jack B. Yeats in particular — is worth the time. Free entry.
• Walk the Georgian squares: Merrion Square to Fitzwilliam Square. These two back-to-back squares give Dublin’s Georgian grid its best continuous stretch.

Afternoon:

• St. Patrick’s Cathedral — the largest church in Ireland, Jonathan Swift’s burial place, and one of the few medieval buildings in Dublin with an intact interior
• Walk through the Liberties neighborhood — the old weaving district, now one of Dublin’s more characterful areas
• Marsh’s Library next to St. Patrick’s — Ireland’s oldest public library, unchanged since 1707. Small and worth it.

Evening:

• The Cedar Tree on St Andrew’s Street — Lebanese restaurant in the city center. One of those places that rewards booking ahead. Mezze-first ordering makes sense here.

Tips:

• Fitzwilliam Square is private (residents only inside) but the exterior is the architecture
• The Liberties is walkable from St. Patrick’s — easy to combine the two

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Day 4: Kilmainham Gaol & Phoenix Park

Morning:

• Kilmainham Gaol — book in advance; it fills up. The guided tour is mandatory and runs 75 minutes. This is where the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising were executed. The tour is careful, well-paced, and more affecting than you’d expect from a former prison.
• The Victorian east wing — cast-iron landing galleries, identical cell doors, a central skylight — is the visual centerpiece. It’s been used in so many films the space will feel familiar.

Afternoon:

• Phoenix Park — at 1,750 acres, one of the largest enclosed urban parks in Europe. The herd of wild fallow deer have been in the park since the 17th century.
• Áras an Uachtaráin (the Irish President’s residence) is inside the park — exterior visible from the road
• Walk toward the Wellington Monument (tallest obelisk in Europe) for scale

Evening:

• Dinner in Stoneybatter — the neighborhood just north of Phoenix Park has become one of Dublin’s better food areas. Small restaurants, natural wine bars, neighborhood energy.
• The Cobblestone on Smithfield Square for live trad music afterward — the real kind, not tourist-facing

Tips:

• Kilmainham Gaol tickets sell out a week or more in advance during spring and summer
• The 25 bus runs directly from the city center to Kilmainham

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Days 5–6: Howth and Wandering the City on Foot

Two open days. One went to Howth; the other went to walking.

Day 5 — Howth (DART, 35 minutes north):

• DART from Tara Street or Connolly straight to Howth — the line hugs the coast
• Howth Cliff Walk — the loop from the harbor around the Head. The full loop is about 6 km and takes 90 minutes to 2 hours at a fair pace. Views back across the bay toward Dalkey and Wicklow on a clear day
• Harbor lunch back at the pier — fish and chips or a proper sit-down at one of the seafood spots
• Back to the city on the DART in the late afternoon

Day 6 — walking the center:

• No agenda. Temple Bar in the morning before the crowds, Grafton Street and the lanes around South William, St Stephen’s Green for a sit
• Coffee stop at Cloud Picker on Pembroke Street
• Out through the Georgian squares and along the Grand Canal toward Portobello
• Dinner wherever the walk ended up

Tips:

• Howth is the easiest day trip from Dublin — no planning required, just the DART and decent shoes
• The cliff walk is exposed; wind off the Irish Sea is real even in April
• The city rewards purposeless walking more than most — the fastest way to get a feel for Dublin’s layout is to stop looking at a map

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Days 7–9: Work Meetings

Three days of work. The office — days that run from morning into evening with the kind of productive intensity that justifies flying across an ocean.

Evenings still count:

Day 7 evening — Portobello:

• The neighborhood around the Grand Canal south of the city center. Walk along the canal toward Ranelagh.
• The Headline on Clanbrassil Street for dinner — neighborhood gastropub

Day 8 evening — Smithfield:

• The Old Jameson Distillery if you haven’t been — the tour is tourist-facing but the whiskey is real
• The Lighthouse Cinema on Smithfield Square for a film if you need a quieter evening

Day 9 evening — Last proper Dublin night:

• The Long Hall on George’s Street — Victorian pub interior, unchanged, the bar an exercise in gilded excess
• This is the right pub to end a Dublin trip. Order what you’re having.

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Day 10: Departure

The flight out was a red-eye — which means a late evening at the airport rather than a morning goodbye.

The last Dublin hours:

• Morning coffee at a neighborhood café — somewhere in the Portobello or Ranelagh area
• Walk along the Grand Canal south of the city center — the lock at Baggot Street, the canal path, the early light
• Keep the afternoon easy

Practical:

• Dublin Airport is 35 minutes from the city center on the Aircoach or Dublin Bus 16A
• For a red-eye departure, keep the evening free and arrive at the airport by midnight at the latest
• The airport has a decent set of bars and restaurants post-security — not a bad place to spend the final hours

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Saturday City Walk (~4–5 km)

The best way to understand Dublin’s layout is to walk it in one long loop. This route covers the Georgian core, the commercial center, the castle quarter, Temple Bar, and the north quays — roughly 4–5 km, easily done in a morning.

The route: Mark Street → Merrion Square → Trinity College → Grafton Street → St. Stephen’s Green → Dublin Castle → Temple Bar → Ha’penny Bridge → O’Connell Street → back along the quays

Open in Google Maps

Stop by stop:

1. Mark Street → Merrion Square (5 min) — The walk west drops you into Dublin’s finest Georgian square immediately. Four-story brick terraces, Oscar Wilde’s reclining statue, the kind of square that makes the rest of the city make sense.

2. Merrion Square → Trinity College (10 min) — Cut through Nassau Street and enter via the front gate. Walk the cobbled front square, look up at the campanile, and decide whether to go in for the Long Room.

3. Trinity → Grafton Street (5 min) — Exit onto the pedestrianized main shopping street. It’s commercial but the street buskers are genuinely good. Walk the full length to the end.

4. Grafton Street → St. Stephen’s Green (5 min) — The park at the top of Grafton Street. Good for a pause — the Victorian bandstand, the duck pond, the paths.

5. St. Stephen’s Green → Dublin Castle (10 min) — Via South William Street through the creative quarter. The stretch around Drury Street and Fade Street is where the independent restaurants and bars concentrate.

6. Dublin Castle → Temple Bar (5 min) — The castle complex is free to walk through. Continue into Temple Bar and the cobbled streets around Eustace Street.

7. Temple Bar → Ha’penny Bridge (5 min) — The Saturday food market in Meeting House Square runs weekend mornings — worth a stop if you time it right. Cross the Ha’penny Bridge over the Liffey.

8. Ha’penny Bridge → O’Connell Street (10 min) — North of the river, walk up to the GPO (General Post Office) where the 1916 Rising was centered, and the Spire — 120 meters of stainless steel that serves as Dublin’s central landmark. Walk the full length of O’Connell Street.

9. O’Connell Street → back via the quays — Return south along the Liffey quays. The view of the Ha’penny Bridge from the quayside is the one you want.

Tips:

• Saturday morning is the right time for this walk — Temple Bar market is running and the city is at its most animated before the afternoon crowds
• The whole loop takes 2–3 hours at a comfortable pace with stops; 90 minutes if you’re moving
• Coffee at the start: Cloud Picker on Pembroke Street (slight detour before Merrion Square) is the best in the area

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Trip Summary

Detail	Info
Total Days	10 days
Base	Studio apartment, city center Dublin
Flight In	Paris CDG → Dublin
Flight Out	Dublin → SFO (red-eye)
Work Days	3 days mid-trip
Best For	Solo travel, city walking, pub culture, Irish history

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Practical Notes

Getting Around

• DART — the coastal commuter rail is useful for getting out of the city. The Leap Card works.
• Luas — two tram lines (red and green). The green line runs through the city center south toward Ranelagh, Dundrum.
• Walking — the city center is compact. Most things south of the Liffey between Trinity and St. Patrick’s Cathedral are a 20-minute walk from each other.
• Bus — Dublin Bus covers everything the DART and Luas don’t. Slower, but comprehensive.

Staying Solo in Dublin

Dublin works well as a solo city. Pubs are inherently social — sitting at the bar with a pint is not unusual behavior here. The trad session venues (The Cobblestone, O’Donoghue’s on Merrion Row) have a built-in social context that doesn’t require planning.

The work structure also helped: having meetings as a fixed anchor for three days meant the personal exploration time had clear edges.

Food Notes

Dublin’s food scene has improved significantly over the past decade. The areas worth knowing:

• Ranelagh — the best neighborhood restaurant cluster, slightly removed from tourist traffic
• Stoneybatter/Smithfield — younger food scene, more natural wine, late-night
• Portobello/South Circular Road — casual and good
• City center (around Drury Street/Fade Street) — reliable, more tourist-facing but not bad

For lunch: the city center sandwich culture is real. Good delis exist in every direction from Grafton Street.

For coffee: Dublin takes coffee seriously now. Cloud Picker on Pembroke Street was the one I kept coming back to — small, unfussy, consistently excellent. 3fe on Grand Canal Street is the origin of Dublin’s serious coffee culture and still worth a visit.

April in Dublin

April is a reasonable bet. The weather is mild (8–14°C), and rain is consistent but rarely heavy. The longer spring days mean light until 8:30pm by mid-April, which changes the pace of evenings entirely.

Easter weekend falls in April and brings some closures — check opening hours for major attractions.

The crowds are manageable compared to summer. Kilmainham and the Book of Kells still need advance booking; most else is walk-in.

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Must-Do Highlights

1. Kilmainham Gaol tour — one of the best-executed historical museum experiences in Europe
2. The Long Hall — the pub to end with
3. Trinity Long Room — if you’re going to see one library interior this decade
4. Howth cliff walk — the easiest day out of the city and the one that felt most worth it
5. Cloud Picker coffee — the small café I kept coming back to
6. Temple Bar and Grafton Street on foot — the city center done the way it’s meant to be done
7. Trad session at The Cobblestone — the real thing, not the tourist version
8. Merrion Square — the Georgian grid at its most complete