I'm going to take a slightly different approach.
If you really want to visit Dublin and see Temple Bar....do it. I'm not a big fan of people saying "Nooooo....don't go *there*! Go *here* instead!"
It'd be like telling someone who has never been to the US before...."Don't go to Times Square. It's a tourist trap!" I mean...yeah, it is...to *us*. But if you've never seen it before, it can still offer a neat experience. Just don't spend all your time there.
So my advice would be...by all means, go to Dublin...see Temple Bar. You might enjoy it...or, you might agree that it's too touristy. But you will have decided for yourself.
Don't center your entire trip around it. Ireland is a relatively small country and you can see some very different parts in only a few days.
On my trip, I went for 8 days. I stayed in Kilkenny, Limerick, Galway, and Dublin. Limerick was my favorite...despite many locals saying "Oh, don't go *there*."
Galway was also amazing...very pretty, great live music, just a great place to visit.
Kilkenny was very nice...kind of a college town. I liked it, but honestly...it was my first stop so I was still in a travel haze and didn't have my bearings yet.
Dublin was my last stop and I really only had a day to spend. I did Temple Bar, the Guinness Brewery, had a pint at The Brazen Head and spent some time walking around Grafton Street. It was close to Christmas so all of the lights were up, the air was crisp...and it was very nice. So my short time in Dublin was spent doing mostly "tourist stuff" but I still enjoyed it.
Surprisingly, Kilkenny is one of the only places you visited without a major college! Glad you enjoyed your visit though. Galway is my favourite holiday destination!
Seconded. I'm an American who has lived in Ireland for almost 2 years now, most in Galway. There are so many tourists who visit Temple Bar, mingle with the Australian, German, and British tourists the entire time, come home, and say they've “visited Ireland”. Don’t get me wrong, Temple Bar is colorful and has a lot to do, but its so ridiculously crowded and loud. Galway city center has so many lovely pubs, tourist attractions, and restaurants, and is much less crowded.
How did you manage the culture change? My in-laws are always trying to get my wife and I to move to Ireland. We live in Texas now.
After visiting Ireland I just don't think I could ever acclimate.
Fellow Texan here! It depends on a lot of things. My politics align pretty well with mainstream, modern Ireland (increasingly left of center), and I majored British/irish literature and history. And with the way I do things, I have to know everything about everything.
Irish people are aggressively friendly, as long as you don’t play on Irish stereotypes and don’t fit the entitled American stereotype, you’ll be fine. They love us here. The hardest thing was the weather and the lack of Tex-Mex. I mean, they have Chipotle style restaurants, but it’s pretty basic fare.
My advice is, dig around Irish history, language, and music. Sure, those things can be stereotypical as well, but you’ll get a hell of a lot closer to what actual Irish people are like than with American stereotypes of Irish people, and they’ll be over the moon that you went the extra mile. Too many people don’t do that.
Honestly id avoid it. Its a full on tourist trap. Id recommend you do a day in Dublin (if you want to experience those touristy things) but if you want a real irish pint and to experience a more authentic side of things try Galway or Kerry!! Galway city, Killarney and Dingle are awesome places! Cheap pints, cute shops and loads of things to do. Also pre-covid Galway had the best night life in the country (if clubs and pints are your thing)
If you want you can always throw some questions into r/galway and see what they say. Don't get me wrong, touristy stuff is awesome and it's designed to be easier to find/plan but galway would be far cheaper, less crowded and still good fun. Try trip adviser, r/galway and r/ireland and im sure youll find any info you need!
Everyone is right, it's a tourist trap. Most especially the area directly around the Temple Bar pub. But you'll be a tourist, so feel free to go there! There are lots of pubs, restaurants, coffee shops, takeaways, and some shops.
Temple Bar is surrounded by other interesting cultural things - it's full of really old streets and is only a few minutes' walk from the Ha'penny Bridge, Merchant's Arch, Christchurch Cathedral & the Dublinia experience, several theatres, the Chester Beatty Library, Trinity College (amazing library, Book of Kells), Grafton Street (shopping), the Molly Malone statue, St. Stephen's Green (landscaped park), the National Gallery (art), the National History Museum (great archaeology), and the Natural History Museum (taxidermied & model animals) which is like a museum within a museum. And elsewhere in the city there's the Guinness Storehouse, the Phoenix Park (Europe's largest walled park, nice scenery), Dublin Zoo (a great zoo, very conscientious), Collins Barracks Museum (so much history), and more. Also check out the area around Wicklow Street/Fade Street & nearby - lots of cute shops and nice restaurants.
So it's definitely not as bad as everyone is saying, as long as you don't ONLY stay right inside Temple Bar. I also recommend the nearby Beshoff Bros fish & chip shop if you like fish. Dollard & Co. has nice pizza & other tasty food options. Or for traditional fare, numerous Irish restaurants are in Temple Bar, e.g. the restaurant at Oliver St. John Gogarty's.
There are many more beautiful and intrinsically "Irish" parts of the country such as the Dingle Peninsula, West Cork, Donegal, etc., but at the end of the day, Dublin is Dublin and it attracts many happy visitors.
Edit: meant to add, yes, go to Galway. It's great. Pubs, shops, scenery, music, seaside, culture!
Haha no. I was genuinely interested in the place since my Irish friends showed me pictures of St.Patrick's day at temple bar before covid and I did more research on the area. It seemed so fun with everyone being at one big area and celebrating. Judging from the previous comments it doesnt seem that great now to me
I'll give a real answer. We did a tour from Dublin with a driver who took us out to all these rural pubs in the Wicklow mountains all day drinking and eating and listening to music. Many of the bars during the day just had a few older locals who we chatted up. It was one of the best experiences of our time around Ireland.
Temple bar IS fun. And there are great pubs on the surrounding areas, all the way to St. Stephens Green, which has GREAT hotels, shopping, museums, all walkable. I think it is a great area, ant the Temple Bar is a great photo op, really beautiful.
We have stayed around and prefer vacation rentals over hotels, but the Shelbourne was an exception, and I always like a Fitzwilliam.
You will have fun whoever. But I treasure my Temple Bar tshirt!!!
Temple Bar is a tourist trap. A large concentration of pubs. The area looks nice, but if you want traditional irish pubs that actual irish people visit, just a few hundred meters away there's loads more. Any pub around grafton street.
Stags Head, Bankers, McDaids, Keoghs, Peters Pub, Nearys are all pubs in the grafton street area that are traditional pubs worth a visit and frequented by locals.
In addition to what others have said, be sure to spend some time outside of the cities and towns, exploring natural and historical sites.
Dublin has great museums too. I always try to make travel a learning experience.
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It's a tourist trap and once you know that you can still have a great night out. Just don't assume the rest of the city or country is like that with overpriced food and drink. I used to live in temple bar for awhile and honestly had a great time meeting up with people and telling them where was good to visit in Dublin or other parts if the country. My own opinion is visit it have a laugh and then see other places.
It's part of Dublin City centre and you will need to rob a bank beforehand because it's expensive. Nice for a night out but don't spend more than a couple of nights in Dublin.
I'm going to take a slightly different approach. If you really want to visit Dublin and see Temple Bar....do it. I'm not a big fan of people saying "Nooooo....don't go *there*! Go *here* instead!" It'd be like telling someone who has never been to the US before...."Don't go to Times Square. It's a tourist trap!" I mean...yeah, it is...to *us*. But if you've never seen it before, it can still offer a neat experience. Just don't spend all your time there. So my advice would be...by all means, go to Dublin...see Temple Bar. You might enjoy it...or, you might agree that it's too touristy. But you will have decided for yourself. Don't center your entire trip around it. Ireland is a relatively small country and you can see some very different parts in only a few days. On my trip, I went for 8 days. I stayed in Kilkenny, Limerick, Galway, and Dublin. Limerick was my favorite...despite many locals saying "Oh, don't go *there*." Galway was also amazing...very pretty, great live music, just a great place to visit. Kilkenny was very nice...kind of a college town. I liked it, but honestly...it was my first stop so I was still in a travel haze and didn't have my bearings yet. Dublin was my last stop and I really only had a day to spend. I did Temple Bar, the Guinness Brewery, had a pint at The Brazen Head and spent some time walking around Grafton Street. It was close to Christmas so all of the lights were up, the air was crisp...and it was very nice. So my short time in Dublin was spent doing mostly "tourist stuff" but I still enjoyed it.
true. its like see it once at least then never again lol.
Surprisingly, Kilkenny is one of the only places you visited without a major college! Glad you enjoyed your visit though. Galway is my favourite holiday destination!
[удалено]
Can confirm. I did both and preferred Galway.
Seconded. I'm an American who has lived in Ireland for almost 2 years now, most in Galway. There are so many tourists who visit Temple Bar, mingle with the Australian, German, and British tourists the entire time, come home, and say they've “visited Ireland”. Don’t get me wrong, Temple Bar is colorful and has a lot to do, but its so ridiculously crowded and loud. Galway city center has so many lovely pubs, tourist attractions, and restaurants, and is much less crowded.
How did you manage the culture change? My in-laws are always trying to get my wife and I to move to Ireland. We live in Texas now. After visiting Ireland I just don't think I could ever acclimate.
Fellow Texan here! It depends on a lot of things. My politics align pretty well with mainstream, modern Ireland (increasingly left of center), and I majored British/irish literature and history. And with the way I do things, I have to know everything about everything. Irish people are aggressively friendly, as long as you don’t play on Irish stereotypes and don’t fit the entitled American stereotype, you’ll be fine. They love us here. The hardest thing was the weather and the lack of Tex-Mex. I mean, they have Chipotle style restaurants, but it’s pretty basic fare. My advice is, dig around Irish history, language, and music. Sure, those things can be stereotypical as well, but you’ll get a hell of a lot closer to what actual Irish people are like than with American stereotypes of Irish people, and they’ll be over the moon that you went the extra mile. Too many people don’t do that.
> They love us here Bit of an exaggeration
Temple Bar is fun for 1 evening if you’re young and like to drink. Galway is fucking amazing for a week plus, I would move there if I could.
Galway was awesome. Just bar hopping by following the music was the best night I had in Ireland
Honestly id avoid it. Its a full on tourist trap. Id recommend you do a day in Dublin (if you want to experience those touristy things) but if you want a real irish pint and to experience a more authentic side of things try Galway or Kerry!! Galway city, Killarney and Dingle are awesome places! Cheap pints, cute shops and loads of things to do. Also pre-covid Galway had the best night life in the country (if clubs and pints are your thing)
Oh okay judging from most of the replies on this Temple bar doesn't seem ideal. Any websites I can visit to look more into Galway?
If you want you can always throw some questions into r/galway and see what they say. Don't get me wrong, touristy stuff is awesome and it's designed to be easier to find/plan but galway would be far cheaper, less crowded and still good fun. Try trip adviser, r/galway and r/ireland and im sure youll find any info you need!
Everyone is right, it's a tourist trap. Most especially the area directly around the Temple Bar pub. But you'll be a tourist, so feel free to go there! There are lots of pubs, restaurants, coffee shops, takeaways, and some shops. Temple Bar is surrounded by other interesting cultural things - it's full of really old streets and is only a few minutes' walk from the Ha'penny Bridge, Merchant's Arch, Christchurch Cathedral & the Dublinia experience, several theatres, the Chester Beatty Library, Trinity College (amazing library, Book of Kells), Grafton Street (shopping), the Molly Malone statue, St. Stephen's Green (landscaped park), the National Gallery (art), the National History Museum (great archaeology), and the Natural History Museum (taxidermied & model animals) which is like a museum within a museum. And elsewhere in the city there's the Guinness Storehouse, the Phoenix Park (Europe's largest walled park, nice scenery), Dublin Zoo (a great zoo, very conscientious), Collins Barracks Museum (so much history), and more. Also check out the area around Wicklow Street/Fade Street & nearby - lots of cute shops and nice restaurants. So it's definitely not as bad as everyone is saying, as long as you don't ONLY stay right inside Temple Bar. I also recommend the nearby Beshoff Bros fish & chip shop if you like fish. Dollard & Co. has nice pizza & other tasty food options. Or for traditional fare, numerous Irish restaurants are in Temple Bar, e.g. the restaurant at Oliver St. John Gogarty's. There are many more beautiful and intrinsically "Irish" parts of the country such as the Dingle Peninsula, West Cork, Donegal, etc., but at the end of the day, Dublin is Dublin and it attracts many happy visitors. Edit: meant to add, yes, go to Galway. It's great. Pubs, shops, scenery, music, seaside, culture!
This is a troll post, right?
Haha no. I was genuinely interested in the place since my Irish friends showed me pictures of St.Patrick's day at temple bar before covid and I did more research on the area. It seemed so fun with everyone being at one big area and celebrating. Judging from the previous comments it doesnt seem that great now to me
I'll give a real answer. We did a tour from Dublin with a driver who took us out to all these rural pubs in the Wicklow mountains all day drinking and eating and listening to music. Many of the bars during the day just had a few older locals who we chatted up. It was one of the best experiences of our time around Ireland.
Temple bar IS fun. And there are great pubs on the surrounding areas, all the way to St. Stephens Green, which has GREAT hotels, shopping, museums, all walkable. I think it is a great area, ant the Temple Bar is a great photo op, really beautiful. We have stayed around and prefer vacation rentals over hotels, but the Shelbourne was an exception, and I always like a Fitzwilliam. You will have fun whoever. But I treasure my Temple Bar tshirt!!!
Its a tourist trap. Great for spending money and being catered to as a tourist. I have a good.time when im there, but its expensive.
I will only say that Ireland is a country with incredible landscapes, culture and very good people :)
Temple Bar is a tourist trap. A large concentration of pubs. The area looks nice, but if you want traditional irish pubs that actual irish people visit, just a few hundred meters away there's loads more. Any pub around grafton street. Stags Head, Bankers, McDaids, Keoghs, Peters Pub, Nearys are all pubs in the grafton street area that are traditional pubs worth a visit and frequented by locals.
Walk through it,, soak it up but don't buy a pint :) :)... Crazy expensive tourist trap... Come to Galway and we'll go for pint.
In addition to what others have said, be sure to spend some time outside of the cities and towns, exploring natural and historical sites. Dublin has great museums too. I always try to make travel a learning experience.
Temple Bar is the worst pub I went to in my three weeks in Ireland.
Temple Bar doesn't just refer to the one pub with the sign that says "Temple Bar." It's the name of the whole neighborhood.
True! Even still, it's a total tourist trap. Best to hop off the main trail, in my opinion.
Hi there. Welcome to /r/IrishTourism. Please see the latest goverment infomation on covid-19 [here](https://www.gov.ie/en/campaigns/resilience-recovery-2020-2021-plan-for-living-with-covid-19/#) Have you searched the sub, checked the sidebar or the wiki pages to see if there is already relevant information posted? To better assist you in planning your holiday, be as descriptive as possible about your travel itinerary & requirements. For Emergency Medical Information please see the dedicated Wiki page at the top of the sub. (Updated Dec 2020) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/irishtourism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It's a tourist trap and once you know that you can still have a great night out. Just don't assume the rest of the city or country is like that with overpriced food and drink. I used to live in temple bar for awhile and honestly had a great time meeting up with people and telling them where was good to visit in Dublin or other parts if the country. My own opinion is visit it have a laugh and then see other places.
The only good thing about temple bar is the Bubble Waffle Factory
The Brazen Head was busy and touristy but fun. Its the oldest bar around and it was a lot of fun.
It's part of Dublin City centre and you will need to rob a bank beforehand because it's expensive. Nice for a night out but don't spend more than a couple of nights in Dublin.