Ireland Itinerary 4 Days: Dublin, Belfast & the Best of the Island

Dublin Airport is 12 kilometres north of the city centre. The private transfer deposits you on O'Connell Street - the widest street in any European capital, named after a man whose statue stands at the southern end and whose face appears on the €2 coin. The Hotel Riu Plaza The Gresham Dublin sits at the top of O'Connell Street, 200 metres from the statue, in a building that has been receiving guests since 1817 and that has hosted Michael Collins, De Valera, and every Irish president since the state was founded.

Day 1 is arrival and acclimatization. Check in, walk the Liffey quays, find a pub on Dame Street or Temple Bar, and eat an Indian dinner at one of the excellent subcontinental restaurants within a 10-minute walk of the hotel. Dublin's Indian restaurant scene is concentrated around Leeson Street and Clanbrassil Street - specific, good, and considerably cheaper than the tourist-facing Temple Bar restaurants.

The transfer to Belfast takes two hours by road. You cross from the Republic of Ireland into Northern Ireland - a different country, different currency (pound sterling, not euro), same language, entirely different history - and arrive in a city that the Troubles left in ruins in 1994 and that has spent the 30 years since then becoming one of the most interesting cities in the British Isles.

The Belfast walking tour with a local runs 2 hours and covers the geography that makes Belfast legible: the Cathedral Quarter, the Peace Walls (still standing, still painted, still visited by every head of state who comes to Northern Ireland), the Titanic Quarter where the shipyards once employed 35,000 men, and the Crown Liquor Saloon on Great Victoria Street - a Victorian gin palace that the National Trust owns and that serves Guinness in snugs built for secrecy in an era when what you drank and who you drank with were political statements.

Titanic Belfast is the closing act of the day and the correct one. Nine floors. The full construction story, the maiden voyage route, the sinking sequence, the salvage operations, and the discovery of the wreck 3,784 metres below the surface in 1985. The ride through the reconstructed shipyard in the basement - a dark ride that puts you inside the construction process at 1:1 scale - is the museum's engineering statement. The ship took 26 months to build. The museum took four years. The proportions feel right.

Dublin rewards the traveller who covers it at walking pace. The guided city tour of Dublin runs 3 hours and moves through the layers of a city that has been continuously occupied since 841 AD: the Viking settlement at Wood Quay, the Norman Christ Church Cathedral, the Georgian squares of Merrion and Fitzwilliam, the GPO on O'Connell Street where the 1916 Easter Rising was declared from the steps, and the Docklands where the tech companies have built their European headquarters in a district that was derelict within living memory.

The Book of Kells at Trinity College is the afternoon anchor. The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels, created by Irish monks around 800 AD on the island of Iona - which is now Scottish - and brought to Trinity College in 1661. It is displayed under climate-controlled glass in the Old Library, which is also where the Long Room is: 65 metres of floor-to-ceiling dark oak shelving containing 200,000 of the oldest books in Ireland, including a 1916 Proclamation of Independence and a Brian Boru harp that is the actual basis for the Irish state symbol. The room smells of old paper and stone. The effect is not subtle.

The afternoon belongs to shopping and personal exploration. Grafton Street is the pedestrianized retail spine of central Dublin - Brown Thomas for Irish design, Marks & Spencer for practical, and approximately 40 buskers at any given time operating at a standard that would headline venues in other cities. The Powerscourt Townhouse Centre on South William Street has Irish crafts, independent food stalls, and the correct alternative to the tourist shops on Temple Bar.

Checkout is at 11:00. The private transfer from the Gresham to Dublin Airport takes 25–40 minutes depending on O'Connell Street traffic - allow 3 hours before departure as a firm rule. Dublin Airport security is efficient but the queues at T1 can extend significantly during morning peak hours (06:00–09:00) and afternoon peak (14:00–17:00).

Three nights in Ireland is the correct minimum and an insufficient total. The country has more to offer - the Wild Atlantic Way along the west coast, the Cliffs of Moher, Galway, the Ring of Kerry, the Causeway Coast in Northern Ireland. This Ireland travel itinerary covers the capital and Belfast because those are the logical entry points. The rest of the island requires more time and a separate itinerary built around what you now know you came here for.