So in December we decided to leave the charming UK weather and head to the equally as sunny Ireland. As the scrimping students we are, our flights cost £15 return from Birmingham to Dublin. The flight took 40 minutes and my partner still managed to fall asleep in that time! (please teach me how!)
We stayed in Isaacs hostel on the northern side of the river which was £8.17 each per night and had a sauna (which we used twice during our 4 nights) We also saved on costs by buying food in supermarkets and cooking there which saved us a bomb! The hostel also had the best free walking tour that ran at 10am daily.
This was the best free thing to do in Dublin which we loved and the tour guide was hilarious. He was good at explaining the history of places and we saw almost everything in the city within the 2 hours we spent. I would highly recommend the tours and we had a sunny day which made it all the more enjoyable! 
We were advised to avoid the temple bar area due to its high costs and we did although it would have been nice to have a pint of Guinness here! The tour guide suggested other lovely pubs and places to eat in the city.
On that day we also visited the National Gallery of Ireland, which had some great artwork including some by Augustus Leopold Egg. We even saw some hyper-realistic artwork as part of a competition that looked like a photograph! It was a good gallery and had a good exhibit on war and artwork from warzones. It is also free which makes it all the more enjoyable place to spend a few hours.
Another good place we visited that was free is the Chester Beatty Library which contains 10% of Chester Beatty’s collection of beautiful books. The library also contained art and scriptures which were also very interesting and it was also out of the rain that day.
Finally, my favourite place we went in the whole of Dublin wasn’t free! However we did get a bargain at the Guinness Storehouse tour of 14 euros each providing we went at 9.45am. This was a funny story in the fact I was convinced I had booked it for the thursday but had booked it for the wednesday. Luckily we woke up at 9am and knew it was 30 minutes to walk there. I’ve never rushed as fast and we still managed to grab some of the free breakfast from our hostel to eat on the move.
The tour was the sort that you can walk round at your own leisure and enjoy the whole process of how Guinness is made. As someone who has been around a lot of alcohol tours, I found it interesting and very relaxed. At the end we decided to get our pints at the bar on the 7th floor which had a lovely view across raining Dublin. Would highly recommend if you like alcohol and no visit to Dublin is complete without this!
TheGreatAmbini 