Enjoying a slow city weekend in Dublin

I have been thinking about traveling and slow living a lot lately. I notice that when most people go on vacation their schedule is jam packed with stuff to see and do. As they get back home they’ve had a good time, but rarely do they feel more rested or energised. It’s absolutely a break from work and the everyday life. But the point of vacation is also to recharge a little bit. So, how do we engage in slow travel? How do we make sure we get the most out of a trip when it comes to experiences as well as maintaining balance and getting some much needed rest?

In October of 2022 I went on a work trip to Dublin with my friend & colleague Veera. It was my first time in Ireland and even though it was for work, we managed to have quite a slow, wholesome weekend there and I really enjoyed the city. People were incredibly friendly, there were a lot of beautiful buildings to admire and it felt like a place that was vibrating with local crafts, food and art! I really like the concept of slow travel: Not going to the most popular place, doing all the touristy things or having a jam packed schedule. A slower pace with time to wander, explore and actually recharge while enjoying a new place.

Now you might wonder, can a weekend in a big city be slow? And I want to say yes! It depends on the city of course, combined with your company and what you choose to do. I find Dublin great for it because it did not feel big, nor bustling, stressful or crowded like some other cities do. Everything was also quite walkable which is how I want to explore a destination: Wandering and taking it slow, looking at buildings and storefronts and popping into whatever you encounter a long the way to where you are headed is something I really enjoy. Especially since I also like to stop to take photos a lot.

It also depends on when you choose to go. You can’t expect a place to be calm and quiet during peak season. So keep that in mind. We went at a great time where there were no breaks from school, way past summer and well before Christmas.

The best way to ensure any trip feels more slow and relaxed is of course to not plan it in minute detail. If you have a packed schedule with things to do and places to be, it can feel stressful. Take it slow, wander around and be spontaneous. Look up a few places you want to see or things you want to do but keep the list short, and your mind and calendar open. Take it slow in the mornings and don’t feel the need to stay up late in order to do as much as possible with each day. Remember to rest! With that said, here’s what I recommend for a slow city weekend in Dublin:

Wren Urban Nest – A sustainable, eco friendly hotel in Dublin

I find that something that really affects the vibe of a trip is where you go to bed in the evening and where you wake up and have breakfast in the morning. We stayed at Wren Urban Nest and it definitely felt relaxed, quiet and slow. The space was bright and soft with wood and natural materials combined with light and earthy tones.

This hotel is not calm and stylish, it is also located quite centrally which makes it easy to head out on foot. It also boasts with being Irelands first Net Zero Carbon Hotel. They do a lot of work to be very sustainable. I really admire that and love seeing more and more hotels work towards this. The tourist industry certainly does not have to be associated with putting a strain on the environment.

The rooms where cozy with big floor to ceiling windows, and I started my days with coffee in bed looking out over the cityscape. After slowly waking up in my own pace I met Veera for breakfast downstairs. We usually brought our bags with what we needed for the day so that we could leave and go exploring when we had finished eating.

Wandering the streets of Dublin

What a picturesque city to wander about in. The buildings were colourful and ornate and the small streets lovely with loads of cute little shops. We really enjoyed walking, doing street photography and popping in to a store here and there.

Something we quickly came across was this Irish Design Shop. The storefront was beautiful and we just had to go inside. It was a lovely store with very well curated, high quality products and art produced locally. I could’ve spent a lot of time in there (as well as money honestly).

Another place we went to, twice actually, was a cheese shop called Sheridans Cheesemongers. Oh. My. Gosh. If you are in to cheese, this is a must stop. They sell locally produced cheese from carefully selected family farms, and have been around since 1995. The brothers Seamus and Kevin Sheridan, who still run it today, started selling Irish farmhouse cheeses at the Galway market. Shortly after they opened a shop in Galway with Irish farmhouse cheeses piled from floor to ceiling.

These days they also sell some European cheese as well as a huge range of other artisan foods including olive oils, cured meats, condiments and pasta sourced during travels in Europe. We chatted a bit with one of the staff in the store, and it was so interesting and wonderful to hear about their close relationship with local farmers and the importance and pride they feel about that.

We had great weather during our stay, and for being in October, the sun felt quite warm. Which was a good thing since there is a small ice cream shop in Dublin called the Three Twenty Ice Cream Lab, and I love ice cream, and allegedly this place is “Dublins top Artisan small batch Ice Cream Lab” according to their own website. But am not a fan of ice cream if it’s too cold out. Luckily, that wasn’t our circumstance so we did a pit stop for some ice cream, which was made the same day from local cream.

This truly is my favorite part about traveling and not having a busy schedule. You walk by an interesting place like this, and you have no where to be, so you can just decide to stop and enjoy something delicious and have a little sit down. Lovely! And yes, the ice cream was truly amazing. I highly recommend it!

Walking around, and taking little stops like these, is also such a great way to truly spend some quality time with a friend. Veera lives in Helsinki, so I don’t see her all that often (we try to make it happen minimum once a year), but we chat almost daily online. But while wandering around and stopping to eat or drink we really got to catch up on life and talk about so many different things. And I do find you get closer to people and get to know them better, when traveling together. Which me and Veera have done a lot by now!

Speaking of nice stops for some rest, enjoying a city and just chatting for a bit: We also made a stop at the Loose Cannon for a glass of wine and a small charcuterie board. I think that was kind of our lunch that day? I mean we had also snacked on cheese and ice cream, so we were in a good spot hah!

St Stephen’s Green Park

On one of our days we decided to switch it up from the city life and get some more green scenery. And this is something I always try to do when I travel in cities, look up if there’s a bigger park to spend a few hours in. I find I often need to catch a break from the city life and swap stone streets and people for greenery and animal life. Now Dublin, like I mentioned, did not feel hectic or bustling, but it is always nice to spend some time in nature anyways. It helps a trip feel more slow and that it is actually a vacation where I am recharging my batteries a bit.

So, we set out to St Stephen’s Park, located in the middle of Dublin. It’s a park cared for by the Office of Public Works, an important public resource in the area, and provides an oasis of green calm in the middle of the city. Its four centuries of history are eventful and complex, involving important figures as well as hosting a large number of important sculptural monuments to Irish history. We walked around with a cup of coffee watching the people and enjoying the bird life. There’s a lovely pond in the middle and loads of benches in the park to sit down for a rest.

Time for whisky – A tour at Roe & Co Distillery

Now, can you really visit Ireland without going for a wee dram? Absolutely not. We had a tour booked at the distillery Roe & Co, which is a smaller, but very modern distillery, located about a 30 minute walk from Hotel Wren where we were staying. This visit was the highlight of the trip for me I think. It’s an absolutely gorgeous distillery. Our guide was top notch a m a z i n g and the classic “this is how it works, this is where we make it” was not something we spent too much time on, because honestly – most of us know how it works and only need some quick info. Instead, we got to learn more about the history of the distillery and their mindset and values. It felt more personal and genuine.

George Roe & Co helped build the golden era of Irish whiskey in the 19th century. Their distillery at Thomas Street in Dublin extended over 17 acres and they were Ireland’s largest exporter of whiskey. However the amazing story of George Roe, his family and their famous whiskies, has largely been lost to history since the distillery closed its gates in 1926, and all that remains is the distillery windmill tower and a pear tree that flowers to this day. Which is why there is a pear at the bottom of each bottle (it’s beautiful). Roe & Co was neighbours with Guiness from the start, and the pear tree sit directly across from the famous St. James’s Gate Guinness Brewery as a reminder of George Roe’s former prominence in the city’s life and now as a source of inspiration for the new whiskey.

After the tour and interesting history lesson, we went into a “classroom” for a workshop in making a whisky cocktail. We got to explore the 5 basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami, and then choose what we liked the most for our drink.

We talked about the different flavours, how they are perceived and what usually goes well together. Then we each got a little kit in a beautiful box with some whisky, flasks witch the 5 basic tastes and the tools necessary to make a cocktail. I went with a salty umami one and it was delicious!

After the tour and cocktail making we went to their bar which was honestly top of the line. Visually stunning, their drink menu had a gorgeous design (I honestly secretly wish I had taken one with me) and the cocktails where to die for. Oh, and the whisky made here is a huge favorite of mine now. I can’t get a hold of it in Sweden sadly, but you can in Helsinki so every once in a while I ask Veera or Kathrin to send one over to me. Or I pick one up when I go to visit.

The Seafood Café

Well, snacks and whisky aside, where to eat in Dublin? During our stay we had time to visit a few different restaurants, and while nothing was bad, sadly most of them also didn’t stand out to me. Except this one, the Seafood Café. It’s a small, modern restaurant located in the heart of Dublin. They are a multi award-winning restaurant that prides itself on serving the freshest and most delicious seafood dishes in the city, and they a very committed to sustainability and the responsible sourcing their seafood.

We shared a small plate of oysters for starters, which is something I don’t eat fairly often, but always enjoy when I do. Especially when they’re as high quality as these were, and paired with a good white wine. It’s quite the delicacy in Ireland so we had to have some before our main course. I ordered the crispy prawn tacos, and it was excellent. I highly recommend this place for both lunch and dinner!

Touristy things worth doing

Alright, it’s time to dive in to some of the more touristy things of Dublin that we did, and that I do think are worth it if you have enough time for it. Overall I find a lot of things that have been deemed something you “have to do” or see in a city to be overrated. They are often packed with tourists, a bit gimmicky and take away from genuinely experiencing a location. With that said, there are always exceptions:

Guinness Storehouse

If you like Guinness / beer, this venue is of course a given. But even if you don’t, I would highly recommend visiting the Guinness Storehouse & Brewery. This exhibition was very well put together in a modern, immersive way. It took you through the history of Guinness and it’s importance in Ireland, but also taught you a bit about the brewing and craft as well as the marketing strategies of the company and how it’s changed over the years. Some of their old images and advertisements used are honestly quite strange and hilarious!

This is a big building, and the exhibition is very extensive covering several floors, so plan for being there for a morning or afternoon. Going through the different floors and learning and looking takes a while. We finished it all off by grabbing a pint at the top and enjoying the view of Dublin.

We started off with having lunch at their 1837 Restaurant, a full-service brasserie named after the year Guinness and oysters were declared a perfect match. The food was really good, and each dish comes with a beer pairing. The restaurant is located on the fifth floor so there’s a very nice view of Dublin to enjoy as well. I do recommend making sure you have food in you before walking around, as you are likely bound to have a Guinness or two. Sláinte!

Trinity College

Visiting a University and walking around campus might seem like an odd thing to do while on vacation. But Trinity College is Ireland’s oldest university, it’s a medieval university founded in 1320! We took a guided tour of the grounds learning about the history and admiring the architechture.

This university has educated educated many of Ireland’s most successful poets, playwrights and authors, including Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift and Bram Stoker, as well as several Nobel Laureates, former Presidents of Ireland, philosophers like George Berkeley and Edmund Burke; as well as a few renowned mathematicians.

Why most people visit the University though, is because it is also home to the old library, considered by many to be one of the world’s most beautiful libraries. It’s an extraordinary 65-metre vaulted chamber that has been filled with history and heritage since it first opened in 1732. Being in there literally gave me goosebumps. It was absolutely stunning and you could truly feel the history of this place.

At Trinity you can also view The Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript from the 9th century, which for me was an unreal experience, having watched (and loved) the film Secret of Kells. We were not allowed to photograph the book, but to see a 1,200-year-old manuscript and it’s beautifully illustrated pages is something I can’t put into words.

This is honestly the only photo of me from Dublin. I just had to have a memory of how happy I was while illustrating the magic I felt in this place!

I hope you enjoyed this post and that it got you interested in visiting Dublin. I would honestly go back for a weekend of enjoying some good food & whisky and just wander the cozy streets of the city. Dan has not been and I’d love to show it to him one day.

My hope is also that it got you thinking a little bit about what travelling and a vacation should do for you, and how to get the most out of it while taking it slow and getting some rest. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section!