If you want to see the city and all it has to offer, I highly recommend taking one of hop-on, hop-off bus tours.\u00a0 The tickets can be bought for multiple days and will take you all the places you\u2019ll want to see in the city and is easy to get to from anywhere you might be staying.<\/p>\n
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Ireland is synonymous with beer so everyone who came to visit wanted to visit the Guinness Storehouse so it was one place we visited multiple times.\u00a0 Our first visit was before we moved when we did our pre-agreeing-to-move visit.\u00a0 Honeybun was just barely a year but we all had a good time.\u00a0 The brewery part of the visit is not the best brewery tour I\u2019ve ever done but the GRAVITY Bar atop the building where visitors get to enjoy a complimentary pint is not to be missed!\u00a0 There is also a nice little restaurant that has Irish classics and really fantastic Guinness brown bread that I\u2019ve been trying to recreate ever since (that I can\u2019t get just right despite having the recipe direct from the source!) and a really big gift shop with tons of Guinness brand gear from t-shirts to food items to\u00a0 home d\u00e9cor.\u00a0 We visited again with my parents and with my sister during or time there.<\/p>\n
Dublin Castle, in the heart of the City Centre, also has a nice tour relating to the struggle for Irish Independence and includes a visit to the Undercroft which is the remains of the Viking defense bank from when Dublin was founded.\u00a0 Nearby the castle is the Chester Beatty Library which is a free museum with exhibits on the history of books with many ancient texts and an exhibit housing many sacred religious texts, artifacts and artwork as well as rotating special exhibits.<\/p>\n Not far from the Castle area (and just past Grafton Street, the most popular shopping area in the city) is Trinity College which houses the Book of Kells, a beautiful manuscript written by Irish monks around 800 AD. \u00a0A visit to the Book of Kells includes an exhibit on ancient book making and a visit to the old library which I found extremely fascinating.<\/p>\n Also in that area is the National Museum of Ireland\u2019s Archaeology museum which houses a fascinating collection of Irish artifacts from the ancient Celts to the Vikings and beyond.\u00a0 The museum is free but the site is not handicapped accessible so going with small children and a buggy can be tricky though there is plenty to see and do on the first floor (or you can carry the buggy upstairs).\u00a0 Nearby there is also the Natural History museum which is known to the locals as the \u201cDead Zoo\u201d which houses many extremely well-preserved animals out where you can touch them (though there are signs asking you not to an out of respect for the museum and future visitors, we did not allow our children to even though everything was within reach!)\u00a0 This building is also not handicapped accessible and while you can take your buggy around the ground floor (and carry it upstairs if you wish), I recommend parking it at the front with the rest if there is room as the exhibit is tight and often busy.<\/p>\n The third National Museum of Ireland site we visited (multiple times, actually) is the Decorative Arts and History museum which is near the Jameson Distillery.\u00a0 This site includes history on the struggle for Irish Independence and the Easter Uprising of 1916 as well as exhibits on furniture, fashion, currency, silver and more!\u00a0 The girls always loved visiting this museum, it is extremely easy to navigate with a buggy and they often have special children\u2019s programs.<\/p>\n If you want to visit an Irish church, I much prefer the Christ Church Cathedral, combined with a visit to Dublinia.\u00a0 Christ Church houses an underground crypt and treasury and was not overly crowded on our multiple visits.\u00a0 Dublinia, which can be visited on a shared ticket with Christ Church, shares the fascinating history of Dublin by the Vikings and has an interesting section on how archaeologists are still uncovering Dublin\u2019s Viking roots.\u00a0 The museum has many interactive exhibits and even the girls loved visiting and Honeybun still talks about the Viking museum sometimes (and we of course, had to buy the viking hat!)<\/p>\n If you have a bit more time, head out to Phoenix Park (the largest city park in Europe) which houses the Irish President\u2019s House as well as the US Ambassador\u2019s residence and the Dublin Zoo.\u00a0 We only visited the zoo once (getting to Phoenix Park without a car was hard from where we lived) but had a great time. \u00a0I have many friends who visit the zoo regularly and really like it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Undoubtedly the question I get asked the most when talking to people about all the places we\u2019ve traveled is \u201cwe\u2019re going to Ireland, can you make some recommendations?\u201d\u00a0 And the answer is always \u201cI\u2019d love to!\u201d\u00a0 We saw a lot of Ireland both around our home in Dublin as well as many of the farther […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[39,52,75,53,76,54,49,63],"class_list":["post-3187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tiny-travellers","tag-baby","tag-dublin","tag-guinness","tag-ireland","tag-jameson","tag-toddler","tag-travel","tag-traveling-tuesday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3187"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3217,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3187\/revisions\/3217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"OLYMPUS](\"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/PC047067.jpg\")
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<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Another place we visited multiple times was the Jameson Distillery.\u00a0 I went a total of 4 times, Honeybun twice and Sugarplum three times (twice in the belly and once out!)\u00a0 If you only have time to visit one booze-related place in Dublin, I recommend Jameson.\u00a0 The visit includes a guided tour which is fantastic and a complimentary tasting at the end (be ready to raise your hand at the end of the opening movie portion if you want to participate in an expanded tasting of whiskey versus bourbon versus scotch!) \u00a0Jameson also had a nice little restaurant and a guest shop where you can get a myriad of Jameson whiskey from tiny sampler bottles to full-size cask aged bottles that will run you hundreds as well as plenty of branded gear.<\/p>\n<\/a>Not liquor related, another place we visited multiple times and really enjoyed was Kilmainham Gaol.\u00a0 The Gaol which has been featured in many films (including the original The Italian Job<\/i>) was once the jail used to hold many of the most famous Irish Nationalist who were held here after the Easter Rising of 1916.\u00a0 Tour tickets are sold on a first come, first served basis and you are assigned a tour time when you purchase your tickets.\u00a0\u00a0 The tour is fascinating and there is a great museum which you can peruse at your leisure before or after the tour.\u00a0 Buggies are not allowed in the museum or on the tour but my girls really enjoyed the tour and museum all the times we went (aside from once when Sugarplum didn\u2019t want to sit during the opening movie portion of the tour and I was left having to try to awkwardly nurse her just to keep her quiet while in tight quarters with strangers and one of hubby\u2019s fraternity brothers!)<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/a>One of the \u201chave to visit\u201d spots for many people is St. Patrick\u2019s Cathedral. We visited once and I\u2019m glad we went but it\u2019s not a place I would go out of the way for sine it\u2019s a fairly short visit and popular therefore crowded.\u00a0 It\u2019s also not the best for little ones since there is an expectation of being quiet and well behaved.<\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n