In Dublin, I walked everywhere I needed to go. I only used busses when I needed to get outside Dublin. These observations are from spring 2018.

Great Walking Town

If you take a look at a map of Dublin, you will see roads more or less radiating from a section of the river Liffey. For me, the place the roads converged was the center of town — the area with Christ Church Cathedral and the Temple Bar district. It felt like everything I wanted to see was within about a half hour walk of that spot.

On occasion, I would take a wrong turn and find unexpected things. That meant it took a lot longer to reach my intended destination, but that was no bad thing.

The Temple Bar district. I saw a lot more bars than temples.

The town is mostly flat, and I found convenient sidewalks wherever I went. Also, different parts of town had a distinctive feel to them, so it was easy to have a sense of where I was relative to the center of things. A wide street with big buildings meant I was north of the Liffey. Twisting streets with no cars meant I was close to the Temple Bar district. Lots of houses meant I had wandered south from the Temple Bar beyond the touristy area.

Christ Church Cathedral is a distinctive landmark.

Temple Bar GPS Trouble

The streets around the Temple Bar district are narrow and winding, so it can be hard to stay oriented. The narrowness of the streets and the height of the buildings gave my phone GPS a lot of trouble. I eventually gave up on GPS and just walked around until I got a feel for that part of town.