Where to Stay in Dublin — Best Hotels & Neighbourhoods

Easier than most European capitals, with one qualification. The Georgian half of the city — St Stephen’s Green, Merrion Square, Baggot Street, Grafton Street — is flat, wide-pavemented and genuinely pleasant to walk, and Trinity College to the Green takes about ten minutes at an unhurried pace. The qualification is the older quarter west of Grafton Street: Temple Bar and the lanes around Dublin Castle and Christ Church keep their original cobbles, which are hard going with a wheeled case or an unsteady ankle, and many Georgian doorways have a few steps and no ramp. Sleep on the level side, visit the cobbled side by day in good shoes, and take a taxi when your legs have had enough — they are plentiful and fairly metered.

For a first visit, within a few streets of St Stephen’s Green. It is flat, it is safe, and Trinity College, the National Gallery, the National Museum, Grafton Street and a great many of the good restaurants are all inside a fifteen-minute walk. If you want quiet above all, look at Ballsbridge and the embassy streets just past the Grand Canal — leafy, residential, silent at night, and still walkable to the centre in about twenty-five minutes. What we would not choose for sleeping is the middle of Temple Bar. It is a wonderful hour of an evening and a poor night’s rest, being noisy until very late, every night of the week, all year round.

Take a taxi. It costs roughly €25 to €35, takes twenty-five to forty minutes depending on traffic, and the ranks are directly outside both terminals with staff marshalling the queue — no hunting for a bus stop with your cases. If you would rather save the money, the Aircoach and Dublin Express coaches run every fifteen minutes or so for about €10, have proper luggage racks underneath, and stop within a short walk of most central hotels. The ordinary city buses are cheapest but have very little luggage room, so they are the poorest choice on arrival day. There is still no direct train or tram from the airport.

Both, and it is worth choosing on purpose rather than hoping. The international brands and the modern boutiques — The Shelbourne, the Conrad, the Hilton, The Dean, Premier Inn, the Trinity City — all have lifts serving every floor and step-free public rooms. The Georgian townhouse guesthouses, which are often the more characterful choice, are converted eighteenth-century houses: the staircase is the original one, there may be no lift, and there are sometimes a few steps up from the pavement as well. The answer is simply to ask. Send an email or telephone and request a ground-floor or lift-served room; Irish hotels answer that question directly and without fuss.

Take the train, in almost every case. Ireland is small — smaller than the state of Maine — and the intercity trains leave from the middle of Dublin and arrive in the middle of everywhere else. Cork is about two hours fifty minutes from Heuston, Galway about two hours forty-five, Kilkenny about an hour and a half, Belfast about two hours from Connolly. Add the airport transfers, the check-in and the security queue to a short domestic flight and the train wins on the clock as well as on comfort, with your luggage beside you and the midlands going past the window. Book online in advance; the fare bought on the day is always the dearest.

May, June and September, without much argument. Those months give you the longest useful daylight, the best odds of a dry afternoon, and crowds and room rates well below the July and August peak — and in June the light lasts until nearly half past ten at night. July and August bring the warmest weather but also the school holidays, the highest prices and the fullest hotels. Winter is quiet and often good value, and Dublin’s museums, galleries and pubs run exactly as they do in summer, but the daylight is short and the rain persistent. Whenever you come, pack a proper waterproof rather than an umbrella; the wind will take the umbrella.