For my winter break during my semester abroad in Lyon, France, I decided to take a trip with my friend Ansley to Ireland and Greece. Since this is our first time in Europe, we wanted to see as much as possible. She chose Dublin since she use to dream of attending Trinity College for university, and I chose Athens because I was craving the coast and sunshine since it’s been very cloudy and cold in Lyon. This worked out well because she made our itinerary for Dublin and I made our itinerary for Athens!

In this blog, I’m going to give you my detailed itinerary for three full days in Dublin, Ireland. Use this itinerary as inspiration for your own travels so you can make the best of your trip in Dublin!

My itinerary at a glance:

Day 1:
Flying into Dublin, settling in at our Airbnb

Day 2:
Exploring Trinity College and the Book of Kells
Temple Bar

Day 3:
Day trip to Howth
Dinner in Dublin

Day 4:
Experiencing a full Irish Breakfast
The Guinness Storehouse
Last Dinner in Ireland
Catching our plane to Greece

Day 1: Flying into Dublin

We flew to Dublin out of Grenoble, France on Saturday night. We wanted to fly out of Lyon’s airport, but we flew Ryan Air and they didn’t have a hub there. One thing to note is that the Grenoble airport isn’t actually in the city of Grenoble. It’s actually in between Grenoble and Lyon, but there were no bus options from Lyon directly to the Grenoble airport, so we took a BlaBlaCar (like FlixBus) to Grenoble and then a shuttle to the airport. The BlaBlaCar was only around $10 but the shuttle to and from the airport was a little more pricey, at 30 ish euros for a round trip. However, it was worth doing our trip like this since we still payed under $200 for our flights and buses. If you ever take a BlaBlaCar, be sure to get there early, because they leave right on the dot of the departure time, waiting for nobody.

When we got to Grenoble, we stopped at a local bistro before catching the shuttle to the airport. I ordered the Croque Monsieur since I’d never had one yet. A Croque Monsieur is a classic French dish you can order at most cafés and is basically two slices of bread with ham in the middle and smothered in melted cheese. For some reason I was expecting the cheese to be more like shredded cheddar or mozzarella (probably since those are the most common cheeses in America) but they used a French cheese that had a very distinct flavor. I’m not quite sure what cheese it was, however. I thought the Croque Monsieur was very tasty, but I probably won’t order it again since it was very rich.

We arrived to Dublin, Ireland around 8pm on Saturday. We had planned to take the bus to our airbnb, but the bus left at 8:30pm and we missed it, and the next one wasn’t for another hour, so we took a taxi instead. A taxi is definitely a pricier option, but after traveling all day, we were tired and wanted to get to our airbnb so it was worth it. I was shocked when we got in the taxi to find out that they drive on the other side of the rode in Ireland! I thought England was the only country that drove on the left side of the road.

When we arrived at our airbnb, our host was very kind and welcomed us into her home. We spent that night getting to know her and her family, and received many recommendations for sightseeing in Dublin!

Day 2: Trinity College & Temple Bar

Our first stop on Sunday was the at Book of Kells at the Library of Trinity College. To get here from our airbnb, it took about 30-40 minutes by tram. Using public transportation to get around worked well for us since we are very comfortable using the public transportation in Lyon, and Dublin uses the same company and system. I would suggest to find the place where you can buy the Leap Visitor Card so you can save so money on transportation. You can buy a 3 day pass with the Leap Visitor which would save you some money. We only spent a few more euros by buying daily and hourly passes, but it would’ve been more convenient to have this from the start.

Coming to Dublin, I knew it was going to be pretty rainy since it’s the Emerald Isle, but boy was I not expecting the weather that they had. Sunday was extremely rainy and windy, but I guess this extreme weather wasn’t super typical because they were getting a major storm that weekend. I brought an umbrella since I expected the rain, but since the wind was so strong, it was impossible to actually use it. We walked everywhere once we arrived off of the tram in Dublin, so we were wet and cold most of the day.

I recommend buying your tickets online ahead of time before heading to the Book of Kells. We hadn’t bought them ahead of time, so we were turned away in the pouring rain and had to come back at a later time. In the meantime, we got lunch at Bailey’s Bar, just a few streets away. I ordered their fish and chips and a half pint of Guinness. When in Ireland, you must drink a Guinness! It’s their most famous beer!

This was my first Guinness and I actually enjoyed it. I normally am not a big fan of beer but the Guinness had hints of chocolate and coffee which I found enjoyable. The fish and chips were cooked perfectly in my opinion; the breading on the fish was very light and flakey, just how it should be (even though this is only my second time having fish and chips haha). I was, however, a bit disappointed with the small portion of the fish and chips, I would have liked another filet since they were small. But since we were in the heart of Dublin, most popular restaurants will have smaller portions.

The Book of Kells

After lunch, we headed back to the Book of Kells!

The Book of Kells was written back around 800 A.D. and contains four books in the New Testament in Latin. They preserve this book by keeping it in very strict lighting and temperature conditions. They won’t even allow you to take a picture (even without flash); I know this because I took a picture and got yelled at!

The Long Room

After the Book of Kells, we entered the Long Room at the Library of Trinity College. This library took 20 years to complete, beginning in 1712, and now contains over 200,000 of the Library’s oldest books. Fun fact: the Long Room holds one of the last remaining copies of the Proclamation of the Republic of Ireland and also the Trinity College Harp, which is the oldest Brian Boru harp, made in the 1500’s, and is one of the symbols of Ireland and Guinness beer.

Temple Bar

After visiting the the Book of Kells and the Long Room, we had basically finished everything on our itinerary for the day, so we had a bunch of free time to explore. We walked around the streets of Dublin for a bit and then decided to go to the most famous pub in all of Ireland, Temple Bar. We went around 2:30pm on a Sunday, so we thought it wouldn’t be busy at all. But there was basically standing room only! They had a duo playing as we walked in, so we decided to listen to the music for a bit before finding a seat. We ended up getting a seat right next to the stage! Listening to Irish music at a pub in Ireland should be on everybody’s bucket list. I had so much fun there, everyone was super into the music, clapping and singing along. It was hard to not smile the whole time. We even made friends with the duo on stage since Ansley and I requested a few songs! We actually made a lot of friends at the bar, everyone was so nice. We made the observation that Irish people are like Americans, they love to talk to people and make new friends!

For dinner that night, I tried a classic Irish go-to fast food: chicken balls and chips. Chicken balls and chips are essentially chicken nuggets in ball form with a side of fries. They weren’t super flavor-full but for a quick meal it was satisfying.

Day 3: Howth

On Monday morning, we woke up early to head out to Dublin before 9am. We wanted to get a head start on the day since the day before we didn’t leave until 10:30am. Today, we went to Howth, which is a peninsula just a 30 minute train ride from Dublin. We were told by a few friends that we had to see Howth when visiting Ireland, and I can totally see why. The views are breathtaking.

As we got off our train in Howth, we were greeted by an Irish man, whose name we found out was John O’Connor, better know as John the Man. John the Man handed us a pamphlet for Howth and asked us where we were visiting from, and immediately he was cracking jokes. He offered to take us on a walking tour of Howth that would last approximately 2.5 hours and we couldn’t pass it up.

If we hadn’t taken John’s tour, we probably would have walked about one mile and turned around since it was so windy, but with John, we saw every inch of Howth and even some secret spots. I mean look at this view, without John I wouldn’t know that this existed just a few steps up from the path we were on!

John told us little stories as he explained the history of Howth and Ireland, and even read us a few poems he wrote himself. If you visit Ireland, you definitely need to sign up for a tour with John, it will be the most amusing few hours of your time here! (We’re even featured on his website!) Here are some more of my favorite pictures from our tour.

After exploring Howth, we sat down for a late lunch at a local pub John recommended to us. Here, I had bangers and mash for the first time and Ansley had the fish and chips. She had the portion I wanted yesterday in Dublin! The bangers and mash was amazing and I will definitely order it again.

Dinner in Dublin

After our late lunch, we returned to Dublin around 6pm and went to an Irish pub for a beer. Ansley brought her deck of cards, so we spent a few hours playing Gin Rummy while listening to Irish music, it was so relaxing! Ansley taught me how to play the card game at that pub, and it wasn’t too complicated so I caught on quick. This became our go-to game while we had some long layovers later in the trip.

Day 4: Last Day & Guinness Storehouse

A Classic Irish Breakfast

For our third and final day in Ireland, we started it off with a classic Irish breakfast at Wuff Restaurant. We each ordered the full Irish breakfast since we weren’t sure when our next meal would be since we were traveling that day. Since our breakfast came with toast and beans, we had to try beans on toast since apparently everyone in the UK has that for breakfast. I’m not going to lie, I was very hesitant about having beans on toast, but it honestly wasn’t bad and I’d probably have it again. It’s such a classic, that a girl ordered only beans and toast while we were there (it wasn’t specifically on the menu). I feel like that has the same energy as me asking a brunch place back in the states for avocado toast! I also tried black and white pudding for the first time. I thought I wasn’t going to like it since white pudding is an oatmeal sausage without the blood, and black pudding is made with pork/beef blood, pork/beef, and groats. I don’t know about you but that doesn’t sound too appetizing to me! But in fact it was actually pretty tasty. I don’t know how to describe it, it was a little bit grainy, but the taste is very unique, you’ll just have to try it for yourself!

Irish Breakfast Tea Time

After our brunch at Wuff Restaurant, we headed towards the Guinness Storehouse as we had a tour booked for 1pm. We had a little bit of time until our tour, so we went to a nearby coffee shop to enjoy some Irish breakfast tea to pass some time. This was also my first time trying Irish breakfast tea, I really enjoyed it. I am definitely becoming a big tea person since being in Europe, I have a cup before bed almost every night.

The Guinness Storehouse

Did you even visit Dublin if you didn’t have a Guinness? Probably not! One of the big things we wanted to do while visiting Dublin was taking a tour at the Guinness Storehouse. Everyone we talked to would ask us if we’ve visited it yet, and would recommend it when they realized we hadn’t been. We knew we had to book a tour! They have a few different tour options on their website. We chose the most basic one, which included a tour of their storehouse along with a pint of Guinness at the end of the tour. This cost 22 euros, and was actually a bit cheaper too because we were able to get a student discount.

The tour was self guided, and you have the option to listen to an audio guided tour through your phone. I started off the tour by listening to the audio version, but I felt like it was easier for me to just read the signs so then I could still talk with my friend and not have to keep starting and pausing the recording.

At first, I thought the tour was only on one floor, and we were just going to learn about the ingredients of the Guinness. But in fact, the tour goes through at least 6 or 7 different floors with different exhibits on Guinness Beer, like where the ingredients come from, the processes that happen throughout each step, how it’s packaged and shipped, and much more. The higher the floor we were on, the more it smelled like chocolate, specifically like Hershey’s Chocolate World! I thought this was incredible, why did it smell like milk chocolate if I was in a building that makes beer? Turns out, the barley for Guinness is roasted at the same temperature as cocoa and coffee beans. Somehow this produces the same smell! Ironically, I was sending pictures of the Guinness Storehouse to my dad as I was on the tour, and he said it looked like a Hershey’s Chocolate World for adults, which is crazy because that’s before I told him it smelled just like that place.

They even taught us the correct way to drink a Guinness! They gave us each a tiny shot, and said the best way is to drink it fast and have the beer hit all of the tastebuds in your mouth to really enjoy all of the flavors it has. If you let the beer sit, it doesn’t taste the same.

At the end of the tour, we each enjoyed a pint on the top floor, which had a panoramic view of Dublin. This was such a great ending to the tour! We wanted to have a second beer, but we still wanted to walk around and shop before we headed to the airport.

Classic Irish Dinner

After walking around downtown Dublin for a bit after our tour, we had one last meal in Ireland at a traditional Irish pub called Madigan’s Earl Street. This restaurant was a great choice for us since their portions were big and would keep us full for a while, which is what we needed since we had an overnight layover in the Stansted airport that night. I ordered their roast beef and Ansley had their Guinness stew. Our Irish dinner was a great way to say au revoir to Dublin!

Overnight layover in Stansted, England

Finally, we headed to the airport to catch a flight to Stansted. Unfortunately, you get what you pay for when it comes to cheap flights, but we weren’t expecting luxury accommodations in Stansted. We did however expect to stay air-side in the airport, but when we landed, there wasn’t a way to stay air-side. They made everyone go land-side, which means we had to go through security again in the morning.

Surprisingly, the night went by fast, and I wasn’t bored out of my mind the whole time. But it did feel a little apocalyptic since everyone was sleeping on the floor and sleeping on their bags. We found a spot next to an outlet to charge our phones, but eventually around 1am they made us move because they had to “clean the area”. But when we had to stay the night again on Friday, we returned to the same spot and it wasn’t any cleaner than the other day.

Security opened up at 3am, so we went through and sat at our gate until our flight took off I think around 6:20am. However, they told us the wrong gate, and neither us nor 30 other people on our flight figured we were at the wrong gate until about 10 minutes before the gate was supposed to close! We had to run back to the center of the airport and catch a shuttle to that terminal. Luckily, there were a lot of us so they couldn’t depart ye, but I was literally the last one on the flight. So that was a little nerve racking.

Stay tuned for my blog about our adventures in Greece!

Have you been to Ireland before? What was your favorite thing that you did?