First thing You notice when You come to Ireland - that's crazy traffic. Besides that they are driving totally wrong side of the road (yeah, yeah, historical reasons) from the rest of the world, pedestrians don't recognize traffic lights. It's green - they are crossing the street, it's yellow - they are crossing the street, even on red light (surprise surprise) - that "just" about to turn green or "just" turned red - they are crossing the street. I can't imagine how patient and skillful drivers must be not to go mad and not to hit anyone who is crossing the street on the wrong traffic light.
If on first day this phenomenon makes you wonder, then on second you are one of those crossing the street not on the best time. And You start to understand them - people seem to hurry somewhere, I just couldn't imagine where. There are too many people on the street in Dublin. If they would mind traffic lights, only 1/3 of all wanting to cross the street would be able to do so. Could you imagine to stand in a queue to cross the street? From that, the second thing you notice in Dublin - that is loads of people. You could hear any language of the world here. The third thing is that it is really hard to understand Irish English. They are speaking very quickly and it seems that half they want to say, they are keeping for themselves - letters or even words. But that's only my impression. On my flight to Dublin, I could understand only a few words of what the flight attendant was saying. That was: "Thank you" and "have a nice flight". Everything else, which had more meaning than those few words, was somehow sunken in the mess of words.
Probably, it's about a time to start telling what one can see in Dublin. Depending on your trip goal (which may be sightseeing, shopping or visiting relatives or friends) there are different alternatives. If you are visiting someone - is the relatives and friends that You will see. But luckily You can combine this option with other two. If Your goal is sightseeing and cultural experience - NEVER go with people whose' goal is shopping or be ready to split into groups or even prepare for the worst - to do the cultural part alone. There are so many shops in Dublin center, that there won't be time for historical monuments, even if people who like shopping will promise You that they will go with You.
So, how a foreigner who has no friends in Ireland can explore the historical inheritance? I'd recommend to take a city tour for about 14 Eur's. For that price You get a ticket which is valid all day and a map with tour stops. Full tour is about 1h 30 minutes and includes over 20 stop points. But You can get off whenever you like, do the photo-taking, museum-church-other-stuff visiting and hop on whenever you are ready to continue. Tour buses passes the stops every 10 minutes, so this is very convenient. With this tour You get quite an interesting story about each of stop points, jokes and even singing part if You are lucky. Unfortunately I didn't had a chance to compare how those tours differs on every bus, but I hope they are somehow unique. Stops include quite different historical and cultural places of Dublin and I believe it covers the wide range of tastes - from churches, monuments, museums to jails, pubs, whiskey distillery, Guinness beer factory, parks, zoo or places where famous Irish writers lived.
Unfortunately I didn't had that much time to do the deeper research on each of places, but I hope I'll be able to do so next time. And it's worth visiting not because of cheap Ryanair flights - it's really a city that is very friendly and has many stories to tell.
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