I booked Dublin on a Tuesday night after two glasses of wine and a Ryanair sale email. Thirty-one quid return from Stansted. I'd never been to Ireland, which felt like a strange gap given it's basically next door, and I'd been putting it off for years because I assumed it would be expensive and rainy and I'd just end up in Temple Bar spending eight euros on a pint of Guinness surrounded by stag dos.
I was wrong about almost all of that.
Friday to Sunday. I landed just after 2pm and took the 16 bus from the airport into the city centre for about three and a half euros. It takes around forty minutes depending on traffic, and drops you on O'Connell Street, which is wide and busy and not particularly pretty but puts you right in the middle of everything. You can also get the Airlink 747 express bus for about eight euros if you're in a rush, but the regular bus does the same job and costs half the price.
I'd booked a bed at Jacobs Inn, a hostel near Connolly Station that kept coming up on every solo travel thread I'd read. Pod-style bunks with curtains and a reading light and a little shelf for your stuff. About twenty-two euros a night for a mixed dorm. The common areas were clean and busy without being chaotic, and there was a rooftop terrace that I didn't discover until my last morning, which was annoying. The hostel is about a ten-minute walk from Temple Bar, which is close enough to get there easily but far enough away that you're not sleeping above a nightclub.
I dropped my bag, changed my top, and went straight out. I had no plan. I never have a plan on the first day. The plan is to walk until I find something.
I crossed the Ha'penny Bridge, which is this small iron footbridge over the Liffey that's been there since 1816. It's lovely. Quick photo, keep moving. On the south side I turned left away from Temple Bar and walked along the quays towards Christ Church Cathedral, then cut up through the streets until I found myself outside the Chester Beatty, which is this museum tucked inside the grounds of Dublin Castle. It's free. I went in because it was free and because my feet already hurt and because I'm a sucker for a free museum.
It's one of the best small museums I've ever been to. A private collection of manuscripts and rare books and objects from Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, Europe. Tiny illuminated pages from the Quran next to Japanese woodblock prints next to medieval European prayer books. The whole thing is well laid out and quiet and you could spend two hours in there without realising. I spent about one, then walked through the castle courtyard and out the other side into the city.
By early evening I was hungry and I'd read that Parnell Street, on the north side, was the place to go for cheap food. It's about a ten-minute walk from O'Connell Street and it's lined with Asian restaurants, a good Chinese place called M&L, Korean spots, a few Vietnamese places, and a Mexican taqueria called El Grito in a basement on Mountjoy Square that I ended up at purely because I walked past and the smell pulled me down the stairs. I had three tacos and a beer for about fourteen euros and sat at the counter watching the kitchen work.
I walked back towards Temple Bar afterwards because I figured I should at least see what the fuss was about. And look, it's fine. It's a few blocks of cobbled streets with pubs on every corner and all of them have live music and all of them are packed and the pints are about seven or eight euros, which is steep by Dublin standards. I stuck my head into a couple, heard a man doing Galway Girl on an acoustic guitar, and left. It's not my thing, but I can see why people love it. If you've come with a group and you want a big messy night out, Temple Bar will deliver. If you're solo and you want something more real, keep reading.
I ended up at The Cobblestone.
It's in Smithfield, about a fifteen-minute walk north from Temple Bar, across the river and into a part of Dublin that doesn't look like much from the outside. The pub itself is on the corner of a square and from the street it looks like nothing. Peeling paint, small windows, no flashy signs. Inside, there were maybe forty people in a narrow room and in the corner by the front window, five musicians were playing traditional Irish music. Fiddle, guitar, uilleann pipes, bodhrán, tin whistle.
Nobody was performing. That's the thing. They weren't on a stage. There was no microphone. They were just sitting in a circle playing tunes and anyone who wanted to listen pulled up a stool and anyone who didn't carried on with their conversation. The bar was serving pints of Guinness for around five fifty and the whole place smelled like old wood and hops.
I sat on a stool near the window with my pint and my journal and listened for about two hours. The musicians swapped in and out, someone would finish a tune and someone else would start one. At one point a woman walked in with a fiddle case, sat down, unpacked it, and joined in mid-song without anyone missing a beat. It was the kind of thing that makes you sit very still and not check your phone.
A woman next to me called Aoife, who was from Galway but living in Dublin, told me that the Cobblestone had nearly been demolished a few years ago when developers wanted to build a hotel on the site. The city protested and it was saved. She said it like she was telling me about a family member who'd survived surgery. The pub means that much to people here.
I walked back to the hostel at midnight through well-lit streets that were surprisingly quiet for a Friday. Dublin is compact. Everything I did that day was on foot.
Saturday. I woke up at seven and walked to Trinity College, which is about fifteen minutes from the hostel. You can wander the campus for free and it's worth it just for the buildings. Old stone, cobbled squares, the kind of place that looks like it should have a Harry Potter scene filmed in it. The Book of Kells exhibition opens at 9:30 and costs about eighteen euros, which is a lot, but the Long Room above it justifies every cent. Two hundred thousand books in dark oak cases stacked two storeys high. I stood there for a long time just looking up.
After Trinity I walked through St. Stephen's Green, which is a public park right in the centre of the city, then south through streets I didn't know the names of until I found Sprezzatura, an Italian place in Camden Market that someone on Reddit had recommended. They make their own pasta and serve wine on tap and I had a plate of pappardelle with ragù for about twelve euros at 11:30 in the morning and felt absolutely no shame about it.
The afternoon I spent walking. Dublin is flat and small and you keep stumbling into things, which is my favourite quality in a city. I found the Iveagh Gardens, which are behind St. Stephen's Green and almost empty because nobody seems to know they're there. Proper formal gardens with paths and a small waterfall and benches where people were reading. I sat in there for about forty minutes and wrote and it was so quiet I could hear bees.
By mid-afternoon I'd looped back north across the river and into Stoneybatter, which is a neighbourhood about twenty minutes west of O'Connell Street that felt completely different from the tourist centre. Small independent shops, coffee places, a couple of good-looking pubs. I had a coffee at a place whose name I've forgotten and sat in the window watching people go about their Saturday. An old man walked past with a greyhound. Two kids were kicking a ball against a wall. Normal life. I love that about cities when you step out of the tourist bit.
That evening I went back to The Cobblestone because I couldn't not. Different musicians this time, a Saturday evening session that was louder and busier than the Friday. I got talking to a group at the bar, two lads from Cork and a girl from Edinburgh called Fiona who was in Dublin for a friend's wedding but had ditched the pre-drinks to come here instead. I liked her immediately. We spent the next three hours standing at the bar talking about everything, music, travel, the specific misery of London rents, whether Guinness actually tastes better in Dublin (it does, genuinely, and I don't know why).
The Cork lads knew a pub around the corner that did toasted sandwiches until midnight. We went. I had a ham and cheese toastie and another pint and the conversation got looser and funnier and at one point Fiona made a joke so good I nearly spat out my drink. I won't repeat it here because it doesn't translate to text but trust me, it was excellent.
I swapped numbers with Fiona and said goodbye to the Cork lads whose names I've already forgotten, which is terrible but honest, and walked back to the hostel at about 1am feeling that warm buzzing feeling you get when a night goes exactly right without any planning at all.
Sunday. Last morning.
I found the rooftop terrace at the hostel and sat up there with a coffee watching the sun come up over the city. Dublin's skyline is low and wide, no skyscrapers, just rooftops and church spires and cranes. The light was pink and cold and I sat there until my coffee went lukewarm.
I checked out and walked south across the city to Kilmainham, which took about forty minutes. I wanted to see Kilmainham Gaol, the old prison that's been turned into a museum. It costs about eight euros and you need to book a tour online in advance because it sells out. The tour takes about an hour and the guide was brilliant, funny and blunt and clearly passionate, and the place itself is heavy. This is where the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising were executed. You stand in the yard where it happened and the guide tells you the story and the whole group goes quiet. It's not a fun experience but it's an important one and I'm glad I went.
Afterwards I walked across the road to the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, which houses IMMA, the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Also free. The grounds alone are worth the walk, big open lawns and old stone walls and views back towards the city. I had about an hour before I needed to head to the airport so I walked through a couple of the galleries and sat on a bench in the grounds and ate a croissant I'd bought from a bakery on the way.
The 747 bus back to the airport took about thirty-five minutes and cost eight euros. I sat on the plane home thinking about The Cobblestone and the Chester Beatty and Fiona's joke and the Long Room and the tacos on Mountjoy Square.
Three days. Thirty-one quid on the flight. About sixty-six euros on the hostel. Pints for five fifty. The best museum I've ever been to for free. Trad music that made me sit still for two hours. A toasted sandwich at midnight in a pub I'll never find again.
Dublin is not cheap. People will tell you that and they're right, the accommodation costs more than Prague or Lisbon or most of Eastern Europe. But the free stuff is extraordinary, the music is real, strangers will talk to you like they've known you for years, and the Guinness thing is true.
I'll go back. Probably soon. I need to hear that fiddle player again.