What should I avoid in Dublin?

Temple Bar is the trap that gets nearly everyone. The cobblestones are real, the fiddle music drifting out of doorways is real, but €8.50 for a pint of Guinness is about €3 more than you'd pay at Kehoe's on South Anne Street or Mulligan's on Poolbeg Street — both within a ten-minute walk. The problem isn't that Temple Bar is bad, exactly. It's that the crowd density, the sticky floors, and the stag-party volume make it feel like a theme park version of Irish pub culture. Walk through at 4pm on a Tuesday for the architecture. Drink elsewhere.

The Leprechaun Museum on Jervis Street charges €18 for what amounts to oversized furniture and a gift shop. That's the same price as the Chester Beatty Library charges for nothing — because it's free, and it holds one of the finest collections of Islamic manuscripts and East Asian art in Europe. The Guinness Storehouse is worth doing once, but book the first slot on a weekday morning. By noon on a Saturday the queues snake past the gates and you'll spend half your visit shuffling shoulder-to-shoulder through corridors that smell of warm bodies and spilled stout. The rooftop Gravity Bar view is still good. The two-hour wait to reach it is not.

Three-card monte crews set up on O'Connell Street and near the Ha'penny Bridge most afternoons. The dealer and the three 'winners' in the crowd all know each other — you will not win. Clipboard charity collectors near the Spire can be persistent; a firm 'no thanks' and keep walking. At night, unlicensed taxis sometimes queue near club areas on Harcourt Street. Use the FreeNow app or look for the roof-mounted TAXI sign and the licence number on the dashboard. The meter from Dublin Airport to city centre runs about €30-35; the Airlink 747 bus does the same trip in 30 minutes for €7 and drops you at O'Connell Street. That €25 saving buys your first three pints.

Dublin in June still sits around 15-16°C most mornings and the wind off the Liffey cuts through cotton. You'll see locals in puffers well into May. Pack a proper rain shell — not an umbrella, which the crosswinds will invert within a day. Rain here arrives sideways and in bursts; you might get four separate showers and two sunny spells before lunch. The damp gets into everything. Mind you, when the sun does break through over St Stephen's Green, and the light hits the Georgian doorways on Merrion Square at that specific low Irish angle, you'll forgive every drizzle that came before it.