Will we make it on time!? (Dublin Bus)

Member Name: Shellywelly

Product:	Dublin Bus
Date:	13/11/08 (134 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: helpful drivers

Disadvantages: Bus turned up late and broke down

Dublin Bus is the main bus company in Dublin, it covers the majority of the inner city services, including the airlink bus and the city tour bus.

The Dublin bus office is based on Upper O'Connell street which all buses that go into the city centre stop on.. The office is open from 08:30 - 17:30 Monday and 09:00 -17:30 Tue - Fri. Its only open half day on Saturdays and closed Sundays and public holidays. The office its self is quite easy to navigate round, there are information leaflets/ maps and a area where you can locate bus timetables. The staff are very friendly and are happy to help and offer you information. I had used the city bus tour some years previously but my partner had not, therefore we decided to book some tickets for this tour at 15euros each. There is another bus tour in the city that is slightly cheaper, however most of those buses are recorded audio.


**City Tour**
The city tour has both live audio and multilingual buses available, the multilingual are few and far between and if you are trying to avoid the multilingual ones (which I would advice to do so) you will only have to wait another ten minutes for a live audio bus. The buses are big green buses that arrive a designated stops ten minutes apart, they stop at a total of 23 stops and are valid for 24 hours. Therefore if you are staying over in Dublin I would recommend validating your ticket later in the day so you can use the bus ticket over 2 days and that way you don't feel you are on buses all day! The total tour takes on average 1.5hours, however most people use the tour to get to popular destinations and hop on and hop off throughout. The buses are very clean and the top decks are open top which can get pretty blustery but well worth it if you can cope with the cold as you get some nice views.
The drivers of these buses are fantastic, very helpful, will happily give you advise, as we were getting off one stop they checked with us that we knew where we were heading and advised we waited until the next stop as it would be closer to our destination. The bus drivers talk about the city of Dublin and give you some very interesting facts about the city, they also advise which attractions are well worth a visit and having encountered on many of these attractions I have to agree. The bus drivers are very humours and often make jokes at people coming back from the brewery tours, they also ensure they get the whole bus laughing and joking by singing popular Irish songs and making silly jokes. The tour is worth it just for the entertainment from the drivers!

The tour stops at the following locations:

1) Tour Starts Here - Cathal Brugha Street.
2) Abbey Street - Lower O'Connell St
3) Trinity College Dublin - College Green
4) Nassau Street - Nassau Street
5) National Gallery. - Merrion Square West.
6) Government Buildings - Merrion Sq West.
7) St. Stephen's Green - Grafton Street.
- great for shopping!!
8) Tourism Centre - Suffolk Street
9) Temple Bar - Dame Street
- Best place in Dublin!
10) Dublin Castle - Cork Hill
11) Christchurch / Dvblinia - Christ Church
12) St Patrick's Cathedral - Patrick Street.
13) Guinness Storehouse - St James's Gate
- see separate review
14) Museum of Modern Art - Royal Hospital
15) Kilmainham Gaol - Old Kilmainham
- well worth a visit
16) Heuston Rail Station - St. John's Road
17) Dublin Zoo - Phoenix Park.
- lovely park location with deer.
18) Ryan's Victorian Bar - Parkgate Street.
19) National Museum - Collin's Barracks

20) Old Jameson Distillery - Smithfield
- Brilliant tour much better than the Guinness tour
21) Liffey River Cruise - Bachelor's Walk
- easy to walk to shopping area from here.
22) Dublin Bus HQ - Upper O'Connell Street
23) Writers' Museum - Parnell Square North

Another note regarding the drivers are they are much better than the tourist information centre as they actually give you helpful information, tourist information didn't bother to tell us that the museums are closed on a Monday but the helpful drivers did.

**General Buses**
I only used one of the general buses but again the bus was clean and well kept and the driver was very efficient.

**AirLink Bus**

The Airlink bus costs 6Euro each, which I would say if there is a few of you travelling you would be cheaper hiring a taxi, this bus runs every ten minutes from O'Connell street from 5past the hour onwards. Throughout the day I noticed these buses seemed to be travelling on time and seemed to be efficient, therefore we decided that as we were not flying until 8pm and had already checked on the 6:15pm bus would get us there in plentiful time. Wrong!! Unfortunately the bus did not turn up until 18:30 and there were a lot of people pilling on the bus due to the lateness. We finally set off, all ok and we were not too worried as we would still be there in plenty of time..... Then the bus broke down!!
Panic sets in!! Luckily another bus came by and crammed us all on 2 minutes later and we were on our way. We arrived at the airport for just after 1900hrs and if it wasn't for the useless security at the airport we would have had plenty of time ( but will review the airport and explain more on that later!!)
The bus drivers were apologetic and again very friendly and unfortunately vehicles do break down so I can't really put the blame on the bus company for this.

The company as a whole are much better than most bus companies you would find in England and the drivers are very helpful I would just say it would be better if the company had a few extra buses on the airlink during the busy period early evening to ensure that people get to the airport on time!

Summary: Better service than any buses in England!