Dublin for The Solo Traveller: a Friday-to-Monday weekend

Four kilometres of granite wall out into the bay, built in the 1700s, with the red lighthouse at the end and container ships passing close enough to wave at.

A pub by the Four Courts with a proper kitchen, counter seats at the bar, and a roast chicken for one that nobody will rush you through.

The back room is for listening, the front for playing; stand at the bar and the musicians will tell you where to go next.

First DART from Connolly, the loop over the Nose and down past the Baily, back to the harbour before the brunch crowd lands.

Cross the bay by DART and swim where Dubliners have been swimming all year round for two centuries; the water is about twelve degrees and nobody uses a wetsuit.

The fishmonger's restaurant next door, where you sit at a small table with whatever the counter had that morning and a glass of Albariño.

Seven kilometres along the railway cutting above the sea, with the Sugarloaf behind; coffee at the end in Greystones harbour and the train back.

Ken the ferryman rows you over in minutes to an island of goats, a Martello tower and the ruin of a seventh-century church; tell him when to come back.

The best pizza counter in the city, no bookings and a seat at the bar for one, with a short natural-wine list.

Rent a bike and ride the long avenue to the Wellington monument and the Fifteen Acres, where the fallow deer graze at first light.

Richard Turner's curvilinear glasshouse of 1848, restored to the last iron rib, and the squat palm house beside it; free, and busy only with gardeners.

A sandwich counter on Smithfield that does its own pastrami and brown bread, eaten on the bench outside before the airport bus.