ON Saint Patrick's Day, everyone is Irish, proclaims the poster on the wall in the pub. To be more precise - on any day of the year just mention you're visiting Ireland to anybody and you'll find that they, too, have been there, love it and have a special place or ancestral connection to this land to tell you about.

That is how it was when my wife Vicki and I said that we were off on our first trip to Dublin to find out what we have been missing these last 50-odd years. So with all the information and anecdotes laid in front of you, and only two days to get the best out of a trip, how do you attempt to do Dublin for dummies?

Flights are frequent and cheap from your doorstep. Ryanair will zip you from Durham Tees Valley to Dublin Airport cheaper and quicker than public transport from the same place to the MetroCentre.

Our city centre hotel was the refurbished 1920s Art Deco style The Morgan in Fleet Street, smack in the centre of the action at Temple Bar. Fronted with an upmarket public bar, this curious establishment is a meeting of the 1970s and Alice in Wonderland.

Past Reception, spotlights shine pools of dappled light down a long corridor lined with oversized wooden thrones, punctuated at the end by a glowing chandelier sunk into the floor. A lot of interior design imagination has gone into the rooms but with less emphasis on practicality - white carpets and sofas, a magnet for scuff marks.

The best way to get your bearings is by taking a hop on-hop off, open topped Dublin City Tours bus, even in the nippy early spring air. It's a non-stop circular tour of the city, with buses running every ten minutes, allowing you to get off and on anywhere with one ticket.

Our driver, John Hudson, entertained us with facts, comment, folklore and song. He pointed out each landmark, and in between serenaded passengers with Oh What a Beautiful Morning. He sang Sweet Molly Malone as we passed her statue on Grafton Street and We're All Going to the Zoo Tomorrow at stop 16, the zoo. He filled the gaps with diddley idle didle dum and strange but true observations: such as how there are two Protestant cathedrals in this city where 98 per cent of the population are Catholic, but there are no Catholic cathedrals. Or the one about how the city's river is tidal and gets nicknamed the Sniffy Liffey at low water. Or why, because locals found difficulty in saying millennium, they crowned the new bridge the aluminium bridge. And that wasn't the end of it. Our bus run halted for half an hour and we were asked to board the next bus to avoid a wait. Another bus, another driver. "Good morning," he greeted us. "My name is Dave and I'm an alcoholic..."

Of all the stops, the one that clears the bus is St James' Gate at the Guinness Storehouse. All roads and tourist routes end up here like a quest for the Holy Grail. No tourist can pass this point without taking a look inside. No-one can avoid hearing about, seeing and tasting the dark brew in this city. Three sources told us this fact: that ten million pints of Guinness are consumed every day over 150 countries. John, the bus driver, reckons it's every Dubliner's mission to hit this target each night.

The towering Storehouse, built on Chicago-style construction techniques, is an old fermentation building converted to showcase everything Guinness - its history, brewing techniques, merchandise, restaurant. The tour ends on the top floor where everyone has a taster in a bar in the sky overlooking the city with a 360-degree glass window etched at intervals with quotations by famous Irish writers and wits.

The Tourist Information website offers a free podcast i-walk. It works like this: download a 40-minute guided walk commentary around Georgian Dublin. Transfer to Mp3 and then wander the streets plugged in to headphones.

Early on our second day, Vicki and I were at large on the streets, tied together with our umbilical cord of dual headphones plugged into a bendy double adaptor and then into my Christmas present Mp3; arm-in-arm on the city streets wearing his and hers inner ear headphones, gazing around the buildings and the statues as the gentle podcast voice in our heads dictated.

As it was a new-fangled and fascinating thing to experience, we stuck with it, but the drawback comes when you have to take your earpiece out to discuss at which point you took a wrong turn, and then argue about where you are and what you are looking at in this strange but meaningful Georgian landscape.

After an hour we had done enough of the i-walk and made our way back to the hotel via a coffee-stop at the Bad Ass Cafe in Crown Alley - a quirky old warehouse-type place that we took a shine to.

At night (or any time really) you are spoilt for choice as long as you fancy going to the pub. There are trendy clubs, traditional pubs, traditional pubs with live music, even pubs with plays. Every second door seems to be a different drinking establishment. It's like being a child in a street of sweetie shops. How anyone can get to know the best one puzzles me. The more pubs you try out the less you'll remember, because at each one you have to drink that stout. It might take a year to get around them all.

Two days in Dublin won't scratch the surface and, like drinking the ale, you'll hanker for more. Our trip was a sort of a random walking magical tour with refreshment stops.

There's nothing duff in this city. All our meals were first rate, but not cheap. Just some of the highlights in roughly chronological order were: Amnesty International Cafe, Fleet Street for tastiest salad each of cheese and honey and feta and ham combined with exotic fruit and veg. Best coffee at Coffee Society just over the Halfpenny Bridge, The Oliver St John Gogarty, Temple Bar for traditional meals; Molly Malone seafood starter with Dublin Prawns, giant Irish stew served with colcannan. The Halfpenny Bridge Inn, traditional songs by two local lads. Guinness Storehouse (compulsory, see above). Visit Bewleys Oriental Cafes Ltd, Grafton Street for pasta in exquisite Liberty style surroundings. Walk Grafton Street past the violin-playing buskers and fire jugglers in the hub of the city where the best shops are to be found. And finally for the homeliness and honesty (and relatively low prices) The Bad Ass Cafe on Crown Alley just off Temple Bar. Given more time, there are more serious galleries, museums and cultural venues. John, the bus driver, will tell you.

So we will gear up to see the cultural and literary side of Dublin next. Unless, of course, it falls around March 17, St Patrick's Day, when, I do believe, that if you are in Ireland it's necessary to go for a drink instead.