Teens can be quite difficult to keep occupied and engaged whilst on holiday. One of mine loves shopping, the other gaming. They love to try the latest food and visit cool places but want us to do the hard work finding them. They also don’t really want to walk far. So family holidays are often about juggling everyone’s needs and interests and finding a happy medium.
10 things to do with teens in Dublin
We recently took a 10 day trip to Ireland, basing ourselves in Dublin and Cork. We tried to do our research before we went, and also asked the teens to find activities they would like to do. The 14 year old came up with a huge list, so we were able to have a fun time away, seeing things that everyone wanted to. Here are our top 10 things to do with teens in Dublin:
Find the Dublin Portal, a public art installation located on North Earl Street in central Dublin, facing O’Connell Street next to the Spire and the General Post Office. One in a global network of identical Portal sculptures, it gives you an unfiltered livestream 24/7 and is really fun.
Love Lane is a narrow lane near Temple Bar and is famous for its graffiti. Just off Crampton Lane, it’s not the nicest area, but well worth a visit. Featuring colourful tiles, mosaics and street art, the walls have become a beacon for tourists wanting to leave their mark. We even found black markers on the wall we could use to add our names. When we walked through the next day the youngsters teen was disappointed to see the walls had been painted over for a new days worth of visitors to leave their message!
You can’t visit Dublin without a visit to Temple Bar. We popped in for a drink and to listen to some live music, choosing a family-friendly time of day to visit, and walked quickly past in the evening when the stag and hen parties were at their loudest.
The youngest teen (she loved Dublin) wanted to make a visit to Arisu Photobooth shop on O’Connell Street. She loves photos and scrapbooking, so a photo strip was the perfect memento for her. It cost 6 euros and we were able to dress up to, as well as order some delicious bubble tea.
The weather was exceptionally hot during our stay in Dublin. We opted to see all the main sites via a bus tour which left from near our hotel by O’Connell Street. You could hop on and off all day, but we chose to sit on the bus for the entire loop and it was a fun way to see everything, as well as sit down as we walked *a lot* in Dublin. The live commentary was pretty anti-English but also musical, as the guide kept singing Irish songs.
I was really looking forward to visit Trinity College Dublin which was founded in 1592. The main buildings were beautiful and we booked tickets to see the historic Long Room of the Old Library and the Book of Kells experience. To be honest the Long Room was much more impressive than the Book of Kells. If you’re visiting Dublin it feels like you have to do this experience but we enjoyed walking around the campus more (which you can do for free).
After that we were more than happy to escape to one of the many free museums in Dublin. We chose the National Gallery of Ireland which houses the national collection of Irish and European art. We spent a happy hour viewing the different galleries away from the busy streets of Dublin.
The youngest teen and I have collected Jellycats for a few years so wanted to browse the latest Jellycats at the dedicated concession inside Brown Thomas on Grafton Street. We loved the huge Síofra the Shamrock but had already purchased one of these back in London so none came home with us.
We enjoyed drink and cakes at the beautiful Bewley’s Oriental Café on Grafton Street, as well as burgers at Hard Rock Café Dublin in the Temple Bar area.
I have to add a couple more activities to our top 10 things to do with teens in Dublin which we enjoyed, but fell slightly outside of our top ten. One of mine was seeing the Magna Carta in Christ Church Anglican Cathedral Dublin – you can visit Strongbow’s final resting place, the heart of Laurence O’Toole, a mummified cat and rat, as well as the 14th century copy of the Magna Carta, contained in Christ Church’s Liber Niger or ‘Black Book’.
We ate steak in the beautiful surroundings of the old National Bank on College Green, now a Hawksmoor restaurant. We also enjoyed fresh pizza at Pacino’s, just old Grafton Street in the heart of Dublin – another recordation of the youngest teen who spotted it online.
