N1129 Ball Alley House

I've passed this pub a few thousand times on the 66 bus, which stops outside in both directions, but had never got off one to head in before. Quite an old premises, this would have been a roadhouse on the N4 but now serves a more mature area of Lucan.

The bar was very busy when I dropped in on a weekday afternoon, but I was probably half the age of the next youngest punter. Now, I'm not particularly young - you may see references to pubs that closed in the mid 00s that I visited legally - so the average age in here was very high.

There's a lounge out the back, though, which gets a much younger crowd in the evenings/weekends, so this pub isn't at any immediate risk of demographics leaving it without an audience.

There's nothing wrong with the Ball Alley, but the pubs in the village have a more interesting atmosphere and only a tiny bit further from the bus for me. So there probably won't be a re-visit.

1011787 Salmon Leap

This pub is in Dublin. Just. And Revenue think its in Kildare!

Sitting on a bend in the road just after you cross the Liffey, and hence the county boundary, leaving Leixlip village, the Salmon Leap could pass for a rural roadhouse if looked at in isolation. However, as it sits on the old N4, usually clogged with traffic; and in the shadow of the main drinking water treatment plant for much of the Northside, the idyll you may have constructed in your mind is quickly shattered.

That doesn't mean its not a nice pub, though. There's multiple sections to it, including a fairly small bar and a sort-of-snug-with-windows that is decorated with local sporting memorabilia. That local happens to include a few International grade players has helped, as there are Trevor Brennan and Emma Byrne shirts and so on up on the walls and ceiling.

This is the nearest of the Dublin pubs to my house, however I'd never actually been to it before. I've never really gone drinking in Leixlip - Maynooth and occasionally Celbridge being my normal places before, so I had only been the hotels for various events (two of those hotels are also in Dublin, as it happens).

Additionally, the pub was closed for quite some time. It shut in 2011 due to the prevailing economic conditions at the time, and was then significantly damaged in a serial arson attack in 2012 before reopening, fully restored, a few years ago. Its easily accessible from Dublin the 66 bus, and is relatively cheap for a Dublin pub, so is worth the visit.

S0213 The Donnybrook Gastropub

On my map, this briefly had a name that would have doomed it to a short opening season - "Decemberfest Beer Lodge". But this was a pop-up occupancy, after the closure of the famed O'Connells Restaurant and the reopening as the Donnybrook.

O'Connells did run the premises primarily as a restaurant - and the new operators do much the same. O'Connells moved from the restaurant in what is now the Clayton in Ballsbridge, taking quite a high reputation with them, in to what was then a branch of the Madigans pub chain. You could go for drinks alone but you'd be rather out of place.

The new operator is Oliver Dunne, who notably deliberately gave up a Michelin star at his primary premises in Malahide, and also brings a strong reputation with him. He ran O'Connells briefly in 2018 before closing it, and presumably had little to do with the Beer Lodge!

There's somewhat more of a bar here now than before; and on entering you are directed to stop and wait for a table or walk through for drinks, and they advertise sports on TV. We stopped and waited, and had a quite decent and also quite reasonably priced meal - the second price surprise in Donnybrook of the day after the cheap pints in McCloskeys.

When O'Connells closed, I wasn't sure if Dunne had dropped his plans for it, and actually assumed he had with the temporary Christmas operation. It's quite a positive outcome that one high-end food-centric pub was replaced with another relatively quickly.

N0312 Coachmans Inn

This roadside pub near Dublin Airport is now generally referred to as "Coachmans Inn Restaurant" by its owners, as the carvery has taken over most of the site, and with only a very limited number of nearby houses, there isn't a significant amount of local trade anymore. Some nearby houses were bought by the DAA to reduce noise complaints during the T2 planning application and I suspect more may have gone for the same reason for the second runway; and I'd imagine that drink driving enforcement will have had an impact over time too.

I was working in the area and had time for a long lunch, so popped in to avoid having to make a specific trip at some future point. I wasn't expecting the scale of the food operations to be quite so big, but there is still a small, extremely traditional bar tucked away at the front. The usual range of taps, typical pub decor and a barman in a shirt and tie could put this as the entirety of a small pub in a country village.

The food was passable - its carvery, which I'm no fan of, and I'm having to eat a lot on this mission -  so I had the only different item which was sweet and sour pork with rice - and mash, roast potatoes, full carvery veg range etc if you so wished! I decided to Instagram the meal, because that's what you do isn't it? Except usually its something that looks more appetising, and with more effort made to make the photo not be crap.

1014503 Hotel 7

The newest of the multiple hotels along here, Hotel 7 is quite small and the bar/restaurant is of a similar scale. The reception desk is actually in the bar, presumably due to there being nowhere else to put it!

Fitted out to a high standard, this hotel is operated by Dalata and branded as a "Maldron Group" hotel, presumably due to being 3* like the fully branded Maldrons - but as the Irish star ratings are based on facilities alone, I wouldn't compare it to an older/larger 3* property.

I actually did need to eat dinner at this stage, so I didn't need to ask if drinks only was an option here. However, with only Guinness and Smithwicks on tap and a small range of long-standing Irish craft bottles (Blacks, O'Haras) there isn't much to pick from anyway. The food was decent, the environment nice but unless you are eating there probably isn't much point to go here; and I would never have bothered except for my specific purpose.

1001118 Belvedere Hotel

Great Denmark Street continues on from Gardiner Row, just off the top of Parnell Square, and in a relatively short stretch along the two streets there are no fewer than four hotels - well, you could say four and a half, as The Castle Hotel has merged through the buildings to Waltons Hotel on North Frederick Street.

The wider area has some of Dublins cheaper hotels, but The Belvedere was at the higher end, and the highest on the street until the addition of Hotel 7 across the road recently (and more on it soon). From the outside, there is a substantial section which is clearly a bar/pub, and also nearly always clearly closed - but this is not the hotel bar, it is the dinner-and-a-show Irish dancing and music night which seems to run at least weekly year-round. 

I believe this may have been a nightclub in the semi-recent past, but the noise levels from these are putting hotels off offering them, along with the reducing spend due to pre-drinking. The Irish dance shows are usually over much earlier and have a hefty ticket price. They are an increasingly popular part of the tourist sector in Dublin with bars in - and out of - the city offering it, ranging from Riverdance-lite events down to full on fright wigs and nearly luminous dresses. The photos here place it towards the classier end of the scale at least. 

The hotel bar is instead two cosy rooms off to the other side of the lobby, featuring a small serving area with a relatively limited range of drinks and a very traditional pubgrub menu. Its was even quieter, noise-wise, than the Academy previously so could be perfect for finding somewhere for a quiet pint and chat on a weekend evening - once you are bringing the person to chat with along with you!

N2007 Academy Plaza Hotel

There's plenty of hotels in Dublin that have a Publicans Ordinary (Hotel) licence where I'm not actually sure if I can walk in off the street to get a drink. For some of them I'm absolutely sure I can't, and others where I keep intending to phone in advance before I toddle off a potentially pointless bus trip with no other options nearby - Parkwest, Tyrrellstown, Clonshaugh all come to mind here

However, the Academy Plaza just off the top of O'Connell Street is one of the ones where I was fairly certain you could - and you can. However, I was still greeted by the reception desk as soon as I walked in, something which I'm always expecting to lead to a "no, the bar is residents-only" reply.

The bar is a pretty standard hotel lobby bar, serving fairly standard bar food and macro beers with a suited barman, and a crowd mostly made up of hotel residents. There are other bars nearby - particularly the Living Room/Murrays/Fibbers complex with its three licences surrounding one large enclosed outdoor area - that are probably more conducive to head out for pints in; but if you want relative quiet this would be perfect.