Is a day trip from London to Dublin do-able? Or is it too big an undertaking to make it worthwhile? We already have taken care of our London hotel for 7 nights this July, so we would be leaving London on an early morning flight and returning to London in the evening. If this is a feasable day trip, what are the logistics? Ryan Air? Thank you.

Bo - RyanAir lists flights at 06.30, 07.30, 08.15 ... etc. from Stansted, with return flights as late as 21.45 from Dublin.

So yes - of course it's doable if you can make an early start.

For info on Stansted logistics go to:

http://www.stanstedexpress.com/

http://www.baa.co.uk/main/airports/s...ere_frame.html

Hope this helps ...

Steve

Dublin isn't worth the trouble on a trip to Ireland, let alone a day trip from London. It's a bad idea.

Doable - sort of. Worthwhile - barely sort of.

Practical - not very.

Even though there flight is short you still have to get up to Stansted very early in the morning (RyanAir is VERY strict about advance chack-in and you will be denied boarding even if you are even just a minute or 2 late.)

Count on 1 hour to 90 minutes to Stansted from your hotel depending on where you are staying. 90 minutes at Stansted plus or minus. hour's flight to Dublin. 30 mins into Dublin.

By now you will have been in transit for 4.5 hours and are just in Dublin. Then double that for travel back to London. So you are looking at 8 to 9+ hours just in transtit for one day's sightseeing.

if you want to see Dublin and maybe a bit of the Irish countryside - take an overnight 2 day trip.

Thank you all. This input certainly helps.
Barbara

Of course you can do a day trip to Dublin. The working communities of London and Dublin do daytrips to each other's cities all the time. And you're getting some very negative and misleading advice on the logistics of all this.

Stansted is s bizarre airport to use, unless you're starting from Cambridge, or from the handful of hotels - rarely used by tourists - around Liverpool Street. All five of London's airports (as well as the rather remote Kent International, which sometimes calls itself London Manston) have schedules that allow reasonably productive day stays in Dublin.

All the airlines on this route - yes ALL, including BA and Aer Lingus - offer cheapo deals, though they get pricier the closer to the departure date. There's rarely any point in trekking out to an inconvenient airport, when the one down the road will almost certainly offer pretty much the same deals.

And what on earth is the point of getting to an airport 90 minutes ahead of time for a domestic flight? The British and Irish authorities learned years ago how to combat terrorism on planes without expecting their citizens to spend their lives in airport queues. 45 mins is fine.

Go to www.nonrev.net, then select timetables. Input the LON code for London and you'll see all the flights from all the airports. Choose the one that's really most convenient for you you then start looking at the airlines' deals (there are usually direct links from the Nonrev schedule listing to the airline sites).

Most of the tourist ghettoes are a few minutes' walk from one or other of the stations with a direct train to an airport. From a Bayswater hotel to an LHR automated, queueless, checkin terminal is about 30 minutes.

Dublin is a pleasant, second-rate, place to visit. Pretty much interchangeable - in attractiveness, range of attractions, distinctive accent and overall feel - with Liverpool and Glasgow, (except that Dublin tolerates its citizens supporting Manchester United, a hobby that would attract the local hit squads on the other side of the Irish Sea) it's ridiculous to compare it, as one poster recently did, with Cleveland. But Paris it isn't.

I've done day trips to London from Dublin, so there shouldn't be any problems doing it the other way around. I've always had plenty of time for a little sightseeing and a bit of shopping and a nice lunch before getting back to the airport for the return flight. Also, Dublin is such a small city it's easy to get around if you only have a few hours.

yes it can be done but why?

flanner...the expert commuters between london and dublin know what they are doing as they do it all the time. it is a mistake to compare a leisure traveler with a commuting professional. the leisure traveller often has a family (or at least someone else) in tow, does not know where he is going, has no feel for how much time to factor in for train, traffic or other delays, has no idea that he needs to allocate extra time to buy a train ticket if it is the first monday of the month, etc, etc. therefore, they must always overestimate time in transit.

I am willing to do torturous day commutes for work if i have to but i will not live like this on holiday.

A common misunderstanding here is that it is quick and easy to get around in europe, that a one hour flight means you are an hour from your destination, etc. I think the other posters are more grounded in reality when it comes to how much travel/waiting time you will actually endure on a trip like this.

Realistically, if you get the first flight in the morning, you would be able to be in Dublin city centre before 9am, and you wouldn't have to leave the city centre until after 7pm to get the last flight back - which gives you plenty of time for a days sightseeing. You would be tired at the end of the day, but I don't see why it can't be done if you want to!