Dublin's southside softens into villages once you cross the Grand Canal, and Ranelagh and Rathmines are the two that have kept the most character — red-brick, restaurant-dense, built for the Victorian middle class and still lived in by their descendants in spirit. Do this one in the evening, when the kitchens light up and the dome catches the last sun.
Start in the Ranelagh triangle, the wedge of streets that holds more good dinners per square metre than anywhere south of the river. Take a coffee, note the windows, then slip behind to Ranelagh Gardens, where Ireland's first balloon went up in 1785. Drop to the Grand Canal and walk the towpath west under the plane trees — still water, swans, the backs of terraces. Cut up through Mount Pleasant Square, red brick around a tennis ground, then on to the green copper dome of the Church of Mary Immaculate, rebuilt after the 1920 fire and lighter inside than its front lets on.
Land in Rathmines village under the town hall clock, whose four faces were said never to agree. Buses home leave from the door.
