Two days in the city. Then the coast road west.
Which Cliffs of Moher coach gets there before the crowd. What a Guinness Storehouse ticket really includes. Whether Glendalough or the Causeway is the better single day out of Dublin. Reviews of every tour that leaves this city.
Behind three Dublin doors
The cliffs, the storehouse, a monastery lake and the Causeway.
The four bookings a first Dublin trip is built around. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The long day westDublin to Cliffs of Moher, including Wild Atlantic Way and GalwayTwelve hours to the Atlantic and back, with Galway on the way home. Sit on the left going out for the Burren.
02The afternoon pourJameson Whiskey Distillery Tour with TastingsBow Street, three whiskeys on the bar and someone who can tell you why the middle one tastes of pears.
03The mountain dayDublin to Glendalough, Wicklow and Kilkenny Full Day Guided TourOver the Sally Gap to a monastery beside two black lakes, then Kilkenny before dark. The best value day out of the city.
04The northern runGiants Causeway, Dark Hedges, Dunluce & Belfast TourBasalt columns, the Dark Hedges and an hour in Belfast. Long, but the coast road pays for itself.
Six places a Dublin coach, train or DART will put you by lunchtime.
A cliff wall on the far coast, a monastery under the mountains, a fishing harbour twenty minutes up the DART line, a basalt shore in the north, a medieval city south, and the tomb that beat the pyramids to it. Each one with the day out that suits it best.
The city gets louder at nine and stays that way.
A trad session where the players sit in a circle and nobody claps until the set ends, a literary crawl through the pubs Joyce drank in, and a ghost bus that takes the joke seriously. Dublin nights run late and start early.
Dublin is small, flat and best walked before eleven.
Every Dublin walk →
The old city fits inside a forty-minute square: Trinity, the two cathedrals, the castle yard, Temple Bar and the Liffey bridges. Start at the college gates and let a guide join the dots before the streets fill.
Book of Kells, and the room above it
The page under glass takes four minutes. The Long Room upstairs, two storeys of oak and two hundred thousand books, is why you queued. Early slots are the quiet ones.
Two cathedrals and a castle yard
Christ Church and St Patrick’s stand ten minutes apart and neither takes long. The castle yard between them is free to cross, the State Apartments are not.
Eight tastings between the quays
Soda bread, cured salmon, a butcher who explains coddle, and a stop for oysters. Lunch is not needed afterwards, whatever the booking page says.
The days out of Dublin more travellers take than any other.
Every tour we have reviewed →The tours that carry the biggest share of the city’s bookings, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Dublin to Cliffs of Moher, including Wild Atlantic Way and Galway
See the Cliffs of Moher, Burren, Wild Atlantic Way, and Galway on a long but rewarding day trip from Dublin with Wi-Fi and entry included.
From · $90
Read our review →
2
Cliffs of Moher, Burren & Galway City Day Tour
from $89
3
Guinness Storehouse Entry Ticket
from $34
4
Dublin to Cliffs of Moher, Burren, Wild Atlantic Way, Galway Tour
from $94
5
Giants Causeway, Dark Hedges, Dunluce & Belfast Tour
from $112
6
Dublin to Belfast Black Cab, Dunluce Castle and Giant’s Causeway
from $96
7
Kilkenny, Wicklow Mountains & Glendalough Day Tour from Dublin
from $48
8
Wicklow Mountains, Glendalough & Kilkenny Tour
from $45
Six hours north there is a shore made of hexagons.
The Causeway coast is the longest day anyone sells out of Dublin and the one people talk about afterwards. Basalt columns you can stand on, a beech tunnel from the television, and Belfast on the way back.
Every Causeway day →
Wicklow starts where the last bus stop does.
Forty minutes from O’Connell Street the road climbs into blanket bog, drops through the Sally Gap and ends at two lakes with a sixth-century monastery between them. It is the cheapest full day the city sells and the one that photographs best.
- 1Kilkenny, Wicklow Mountains & Glendalough Day Tour from Dublinfrom $48
- 2Wicklow Mountains, Glendalough & Kilkenny Tourfrom $45
- 3Dublin to Glendalough, Wicklow and Kilkenny Full Day Guided Tourfrom $48
Three directions the morning coach goes. Pick one and give it the whole day.
Nearly everything worth a full day is a drive from the quays. West to the Atlantic, south into the Wicklow mountains, north across the border. What each direction costs to board, and what you get back.
What a day out of Dublin actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. City tickets and walks sit well under the cost of dinner; the long coach days west and north are where the money goes.
Cathedral admissions, city walks, the Storehouse ticket, pub crawls and the Wicklow coach.
The full-day runs: Cliffs of Moher, the Causeway coast, Boyne Valley, Blarney and Cashel.
Private drivers, rail tours south and the two and three-day trips that leave the city behind.
Three things Dublin has that nowhere else does.
Old towns and breweries are everywhere. A book painted by monks in 800, a seven-storey pint glass with the city inside it, and a pub crawl led by actors quoting Beckett are not.
The Book of Kells
Four gospels, painted on calfskin around the year 800, kept in a dark case that shows two pages at a time and turns them every few months. The exhibition below explains the ink and the animals hidden in the letters. Upstairs the Long Room runs two hundred feet under a barrel roof, and the marble heads along it are the ones every photograph is of.
- 1Dublin Book of Kells, Castle and Molly Malone Statue Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 3,825 reviews
- 2Fast-Track Book of Kells Ticket & Dublin Castle Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,661 reviews
- 3St Patrick’s Cathedral, Book of Kells and Dublin Castle Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 882 reviews
The Storehouse
A disused fermentation plant rebuilt as a glass pint seven storeys tall, on a lease Arthur Guinness signed for nine thousand years. You walk up through the barley, the cooperage and the advertising, and the ticket ends with a pint in a round glass room with the whole city laid out below it.
- 1Guinness Storehouse Entry Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 16,863 reviews
- 2Guinness Storehouse Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 4,629 reviews
- 3Dublin Jameson Distillery and Guinness Storehouse Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,608 reviews
The Literary Pub Crawl
Two actors, four pubs and a script drawn from Joyce, Behan, Beckett and Kavanagh, performed between the bars rather than in them. It has run since 1988, it stops where the writers actually drank, and the quiz at the end is not a formality.
- 1Traditional Irish Musical Pub Crawl★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,787 reviews
- 2Dublin Literary Pub Crawl★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,607 reviews
- 3Dublin Off-The-Beaten-Path Private Literary Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 7 reviews
Four Dublin bookings that will not wait.
Most of this city can be arranged over breakfast. These four run on timed slots, single daily departures and a studio calendar that takes no interest in when your flight lands.
- 01Dublin Book of Kells, Castle and Molly Malone Statue Guided TourEntry runs on half-hour slots with a cap on each. The early ones, before the coach groups, go weeks ahead in summer.
- 02Guinness Storehouse Entry TicketThe Storehouse sells timed entry and the Gravity Bar fills from late afternoon. An early slot is a different building.
- 03Dublin to Cliffs of Moher, including Wild Atlantic Way and GalwayOne departure a day, leaving the quays before eight. Miss it and the next chance is tomorrow.
- 04Game of Thrones Studio Tour with Coach TransferThe studio sits an hour north of the border and opens on set days only, with the Dublin coach timed to them.
It will rain. Dublin has spent four hundred years planning for that.
The forecast here is written in showers rather than days, and the whole city is built to be waited out indoors. Distillery floors, cathedral naves, a museum in a Georgian townhouse, a workshop bench. Book one for the afternoon and let the sky do what it likes.
Dublin does one thing better than any city its size, and it does it standing up.
A brewery with a glass room on the roof, three working distilleries inside the canals, and a pub trade that has had four hundred years of practice. Book the tasting for the afternoon and the crawl for after.
- 1Guinness Storehouse Entry Ticketfrom $34
- 2Jameson Whiskey Distillery Tour with Tastingsfrom $35
- 3Guinness Storehouse Experiencefrom $36
By place, city first then the belt
By kind of day, walk, coach, counter or stage
Three days in Dublin, then the two everybody adds on.
Trinity
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