City focus
A Weekend Alone in Dublin
Dublin is a small city that behaves like a large one. The center you will actually use is about two miles across, yet it holds a national gallery, a national museum and two medieval cathedrals. You can go out, look at one thing properly, come back, put your feet up and go out again at six.
Ireland speaks English, which removes a tier of low-grade effort. Talk with strangers at a bar, a shop counter or a bus stop is ordinary, so a woman on her own in a pub or a bus queue is not conspicuous.
Where to base yourself
For a first visit, the best all-round base is the Georgian southside, around St Stephen's Green, Merrion Square and Baggot Street. The streets are wide and well lit. The National Gallery and the National Museum are within a few minutes' walk, and you can be back in your room in ten minutes at any point. Rooms cost more, and some blocks are entirely offices and dead after six.
A short move out gives you a neighborhood rather than a tourist quarter. Portobello and the Grand Canal are about twenty minutes from town on foot along the water, with Camden Street's restaurants and bars close by. A room a street back from Camden Street is quieter.
Rates swing hard with demand. Book early, and check what is on for your dates, because a rugby international or a stadium concert changes both the price and the weekend.
The shape of a good day
Take a timed slot for the Book of Kells early, before the coach groups. The Old Library's Long Room is part of the visit. Then walk out through Front Square onto College Green and up Grafton Street, and have coffee in the grid of lanes behind it.
For lunch, Cornucopia on Wicklow Street is self-service at two counters, so there is nothing to order and nowhere to feel conspicuous.
In the afternoon, choose either the National Gallery or the National Museum, which are five minutes apart. Doing both properly in one day is too much. The Gallery is for painting. The Museum is for the gold, the Tara Brooch, the Ardagh Chalice and the bog bodies. Finish in Merrion Square, the calm park, and rest back in your room. An hour off your feet at three changes the evening.
On another day, eat at the long shared tables at the Fumbally on the eastern edge of the Liberties, then see Christ Church and St Patrick's. For the evening stop, take a seat at the bar of the Long Hall on South Great George's Street. Then go home.
Eating alone
Dublin is an easy city to eat alone in because of the pub. People arrive singly, order at the bar and join a conversation or not. There is no host and no assumption of a party.
A few tactics work well:
Ask for the bar or the counter when you book. Say “just the one” plainly. It is a normal request and gets a normal answer.
Lunch is easier than dinner at the higher end. Several of the best rooms serve a midday menu that is far easier to walk into.
Eat early from Thursday to Saturday. A room at six is calm. The same room at half past eight is three deep at the bar.
Choose the room before the meal. A counter, a bar or a communal table makes a solo meal easy. A room of two-tops with white cloths assumes company, so look through the window first.
A book on the table is a legible signal in a pub, and it is respected.
The thing first-timers get wrong
They head to Temple Bar for the pubs. By day it is the city's cultural quarter, with galleries, the film institute and a Saturday food market. After about nine at night it is a loud, crowded and expensive drinking quarter aimed at visitors and parties, with live music pitched at volume.
Walk through it by day, and drink elsewhere: on South William Street, on Camden Street, in Stoneybatter or in Smithfield.
A few precautions:
Treat theft as the main risk. Keep your bag closed and worn to the front, and keep your phone away, not face-up on a pub table.
Keep your drink with you. If someone will not take no for an answer, move seats, leave the bar or tell a member of staff.
Take the lit routes. The quays, Dame Street, Grafton Street and Camden Street stay busy and lit late. For the ride home, use a rank or book a licensed taxi from inside the pub.
Walk the center in daylight, sit at the bar in the evening, and Dublin does the talking.
If this is the nudge you needed, the free starter guide is the next step.
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