Dublin

Dublin's literary output is disproportionate to its size in a way that's hard to overstate. Four Nobel laureates in Literature — W.B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, and Seamus Heaney — came from a city center you can walk across in under 40 minutes, and James Joyce, arguably the most famous name of all, never won the prize but shaped how the city thinks about itself more than any of the winners did. Ulysses is set entirely in Dublin over a single day, and the city still marks that day, June 16th, as Bloomsday, with readings and pub crawls tracing the novel's route.

The Guinness Storehouse is the single most-visited paid attraction in the country, and it earns that status more than most brewery tours manage — several floors covering the ingredients, the brewing process, and the company's advertising history, ending at the Gravity Bar with a 360-degree view over the city and a pint included in the ticket. Book ahead; it sells out regularly, especially on weekends.

Temple Bar, the cobblestoned district that shows up in every postcard, is worth one walk-through and one pint for the atmosphere, but it's also where prices run highest and the crowd skews most heavily toward stag and hen parties rather than anyone looking for an authentic night out. The better, cheaper, more locally-used pubs sit a few streets over in almost every direction — the difference in both price and crowd is noticeable within a five-minute walk.

Traditional music sessions are a real, living tradition here, not a tourist performance, though the two versions coexist and aren't always easy to tell apart from outside. Scheduled nightly "Irish music shows" aimed at visitors exist all over the city center. The more genuine version — unscheduled sessions where local musicians simply show up with instruments and start playing — happens at spots like The Cobblestone in Smithfield, a bit removed from the main tourist strip.

Dublin makes a reasonable base for a day trip into the wider Irish countryside, though it's worth being realistic about the distances involved. The Cliffs of Moher, one of the most-photographed landscapes in the country, sit roughly three hours away by car each way — a full day commitment for a few hours at the cliffs themselves, worth it if the schedule allows but not something to squeeze in alongside other plans that same day.