We had initially planned on having more than 24 hours in Dublin Ireland to explore, but that time was reduced to 4 hours because  WOW airlines cancelled our flight unexpectedly ( I’ll go into detail about what we think about WOW in a later post…).

However, because WOW cancelled our flight, we were able to discover that you can see quite a lot in Dublin with only a few hours to spare.

Firstly, it is incredibly easy to get into the city centre from Dublin airport (only a distance of 12 kilometres). We took the Airlink shuttle bus from the airport to the city centre. The ride cost 10 euros for the return trip (a one way ticket is 6 euros).  We arrived just after 4am, and were able to purchase tickets for the first bus leaving the airport at 4:45am (the bus runs between 4:45am- 12:30am). At this early time of day, we were in the city centre within half an hour!

The bus has 41 stops, but we jumped off when it began to look like we were in the city centre (perhaps O’Connell Street)?

We wandered around the almost abandoned city centre, looking in shop windows and wishing we could get a pint of Guinness after the stressful 48 hours we had had. We almost completely had the city centre to our selves.

We stopped off to see the Temple Bar and get that typical tourist shot, but unlike most tourists photos, ours included men rolling fresh kegs of beer into the bar!

Next we stopped off at Ha’penny Bridge, just as the first locals were beginning to wake up. We had the entire bridge to ourselves!

Next we decided to walk to Trinity College, the home of the Book of Kells and the filming location for the library scenes in Harry Potter. We arrived in time to watch the sun rise over the 15th century buildings.

Lastly, we wandered back to O’Connell Street to grab a quick coffee and croissant before hopping back on the bus towards Dublin airport to catch our flight to Bucharest Romania.

So, long story short, if you find yourself with a few ours in Dublin you can certainly explore a bit beyond the airport. We were happy  to be able to see what we could in Dublin. We certainly need to make our way back to Dublin soon to see it properly (and get a pint of beer).

On a side note: We can DEFINITELY recommend Kinlay House in Dublin. When WOW cancelled our flight without warning, Kinlay House was kind enough to understand the situation and break policy to refund us our money for the one night’s stay we did not have. It is completely understandable that a hostel would have a 24 hour or more cancellation policy, but Kinlay House understood the situation and were willing to refund us!! We will definitely be staying at Kinlay House on our next trip to Dublin! We truly appreciated this kindness! http://www.kinlaydublin.ie/

(However, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING NICE CAN BE SAID ABOUT WOW AIRLINES).

Until next time, Dublin! Cheers!!

Here is a video we made of our short visit to Dublin Ireland.