Dublin, Ireland

Since this was our first visit to Dublin, we decided to tour the city rather than the countryside. It would be hard to do both, and still have time for a Guinness at a local pub, but if someone was really ambitious they could rent a taxi for the day. Renting a car would work well for touring the countryside, but not as well in Dublin due to the parking situation.
Princess has a shuttle bus that will take you to downtown Dublin for $4 each way per person, and that is what we elected to do. For the four of us, the local transportation tab came to $32, which is about what the taxi fare would be including tip. We didn't see a taxi as we left the port area, so this worked out fine. The port authority will not allow you to walk around the port, and the port is in a pretty industrial area of Dublin, so there isn't much to walk to anyway.


The shuttle drops you on a side street near Trinity college, a short walk to Grafton street, or to any of the main attractions. As you get close, you cross the River Liffey, shown here.







The first stop for us was Trinity college. We wanted to do the guided walking tour but that didn't start until 11am, so we walked through the side gates of Trinity to the old library, which houses the Book Of Kells, a 9th century, colorfully illustrated version of the bible.

The Trinity College Library opens for self guided touring at 9:30am (in season) for 7.50 Euros each, and as you can see by the line, it makes sense to get there early. This was the line as we left. When we got there at opening hours, it was less than half this size. Since the actual ticket booth is inside the gift store, they maintain most of the queue outside, letting in a few folks at a time. You can cut right in if you just want to look in the library store, and definitely don't wait in line if you have a Dublin Pass, a pass which allows admission to many of Dublin's sites for a price of 29 Euros each.

The most impressive part of the tour for us was the Long Room, where volumes other than the Book of Kells are also displayed. We could almost imagine James Joyce, or Swift, or one of the many other poets and writers from this area using this room for their own research a century ago.

Next we walked to the tourist information center to get some city maps, and other suggestions for what to do with our day. There is an ATM across the street from the Tourist Information Center on Suffolk St. After that we wasted a few minutes on Grafton Street, the main shopping area of the city.

The Historical Walking Tour of Dublin, a guided walking tour of Dublin, left from the front gates of Trinity College (on College St., not the Nassau entrance) at 11am. There is also a 3pm tour, which was too late for us.

This informative tour is given by a History graduate of Trinity, and ours explained Irish history up to present day, in episodic form as we walked to each site on the tour.





The tour goes to all of the major sites in the area including Trinity College, the Old Parliament House, Temple Bar (the nightlife area), City Hall, Dublin Castle, Wood Quay, Christ Church Cathedral, and Four Courts.








After the tour, we had lunch a nice pub in Temple Bar, and then walked back to Christ Church Cathedral. Not too far away is St. Patrick's Cathedral.

From there we walked back to Grafton Street, which had attracted a few more shoppers since the morning when we arrived, as you can see in the picture. We shopped for a while, and then walked back to where the shuttle bus had dropped us off to return to the ship.

We probably wouldn't do anything different if we had to do Dublin again, given that we had so little time in this port. The guided walking tour was great, as were all of the things we did on our own. Next year's itinerary shows the ship leaving at Midnight, and we would definitely take advantage of a night in Dublin, at one of those famous Temple Bar pubs, if offered the opportunity!

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More Dublin pictures (mostly of interest to family and friends)