Guide sings praises of Irish pub - but don't forget to get a round in

THE PUB remains the number one attraction for visitors coming to Ireland, according to the latest Lonely Planetguide.

It is still “the best place to discover what makes the country tick” whether it be a “quiet traditional pub with flagstone floors and a peat fire” or a more “modern bar with flashing lights and music”.

The Lonely Planetlists 21 attractions visitors should see when they come to Ireland.

Number two is Dublin, which has all the “baubles of a major international metropolis”, but the real clincher is the people who are “friendlier, more easy-going and welcoming than the burghers of virtually any other European capital”.

The guide is less than complimentary about some of Dublin’s best known attractions. Temple Bar “does have something of a bohemian bent about it – if you ignore the crappy tourist shops and dreadful restaurants serving bland, overpriced food” and at weekends it can get “very sloppy”.

The Guinness Store House, once Ireland’s top tourism attraction, is all “really about marketing and manipulation”, viewing the Book of Kells is an “unsatisfactory pleasure” and the Dublin Writers’ Museum is “something of a damp squib”.

The top 10 includes well-known tourism haunts such as Galway city, Connemara, Glendalough, Dingle, the Rock of Cashel and Newgrange. It also includes Irish traditional music – “Western Europe’s most vibrant folk music” – and walking and hiking.

A somewhat surprising inclusion in the top 21 is the Belfast black taxi tour and it recommends that no visit to Northern Ireland is completed without visiting the republican and loyalist murals of Belfast’s Falls Road and Shankill Road.

Kilkenny is described as an “unmissable stop on journeys to the south and west”.

The Giant’s Causeway, which Samuel Johnson famously described as “worth seeing but not worth going to see”, is also in the top 21 as is, somewhat surprisingly, Derry city, which will become the UK City of Culture next year.

Seeing a football or hurling match also comes highly recommended, although the picture in the guide features an All-Ireland final between Cork and Meath played more than 20 years ago.

Lonely Planetguides claim to give an unvarnished account of places.

The Irish edition is particularly critical of the historic city of Armagh, which has a “bit of a dreary, rundown feel to it, with gap sites, wasteland and boarded-up windows spoiling the streetscape”.

Larne is “lacking in the charm department” and Letterkenny is a “market town run amok”.

“Mindless development has resulted in numerous faceless retail parks lining the roads, traffic problems and a complete lack of soul.”

Visitors are advised that the Irish are friendly, but often reserved and are “deeply mistrustful” of “oversharers” who tell them their whole life story.

Visitors are also advised not to take offence at the Irish propensity to swear like sailors.

“Many Irish unconsciously pepper their speech with curse words, which are intended only to be emphatic.”

The guide also contains advice to travellers who get into a round with an Irish person.

Everyone is expected to take part and the next round “should always be bought before the first round is drunk”.

Drinking remains the country’s number one pastime, “with no sign of letting up”.

The Lonely Planetguides, for which there are 500 titles, are the world's best-selling travel books.

The authors pride themselves on accepting no “freebies” so they can give an independent appraisal of locations.