Fine architecture, quirky museums, and, of course, being the home of Guinness, makes Dublin the ideal getaway, says STEPHEN McCLARENCE

NOW here is an offer you can't refuse: "Step into another world where nothing is quite what it seems." A Guinness-fuelled evening in a Dublin pub, perhaps, with all the craic and the bleary blarney and the looming hangover it implies?

No, this is the National Leprechaun Museum, the city's newest museum, opened this year and pulling in 8,000 visitors in its first two months.

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It's actually more of a bright, modern adventure playground than a museum, though it plays down the whimsy of the "little people" and the "fairy folk". The rainbows and the crocks of gold are there all right but not quite as you might expect.

The aim, says Christopher Carroll, one of the "storytellers" who act as guides, is to introduce visitors to Irish folklore and mythology.
"Before TV and radio, people used to crowd round and hear stories that captured their imagination, " he says. In the event, my imagination remains pretty much uncaptured but what do I know? The children swirling around me are clearly enchanted. "Cool, " drools one and there can be no higher praise from a seven-year-old.

A couple of hundred yards from the museum my wife and I pick up the open-top Dublin Bus Tour, which becomes one of the highlights of our weekend. It runs every few minutes round a circuit of two-dozen stops and is a perfect way to get a grasp of this spacious, feisty, friendly city and its fine Georgian architecture. Hop on and hop off as you like and compare the drivers' commentary styles.

The chuckle-factor ranges from deadpan-factual to a laugh at every traffic light, a guffaw at every roundabout.

We get off just across the River Liffey at Trinity College, where crowds gaze in awed silence at the Book of Kells, the 9th-century collection of gospels many regard as the world's finest illuminated book.

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The detail is touchingly domestic. A long-legged cat holds a word between its paws as if grasping a mouse. A posy of flowers blossoms at the end of a page. The display leads through to the college's Long Room, a breathtaking cathedral of books.

Along the road is Grafton Street, the city's main pedestrian shopping area, bustling with buskers, human statues and puppeteers.

The major chains are here along with Bewley's, a popular café-cum-brasserie which opened in 1927 where we have excellent pizzas.
 Halfway up the street is an intriguing sign for the Decent Cigar Emporium.

"More than a shop: an experience, " it says on the door and that's no exaggeration.

Climb the stairs and you enter an unlikely Irish outpost of Cuba with leather armchairs, quality coffee and cases of the world's most exclusive handmade cigars. "We have collectors who buy cigars but won't smoke them, " says owner Guy Hancock. "Some are too valuable to smoke."

Classy presentation boxes of 40 Cohiba Behike cigars for instance, as smoked by Fidel Castro, go for £40,000. One wall is covered with photographs including Mickey Rooney, Sting, Neil Diamond and Che Guevara. "They've all been here, " says Guy. "Except Che Guevara."

We reboard the bus and trundle round to the Dublin Writers Museum, a fascinating crash course in Irish literary history. Few countries promote their dead writers as assiduously as Ireland and here they all are, variously celebrated, as well as James Joyce's piano, Samuel Beckett's telephone and over by the door Brendan Behan's Painters and Decorators Union card. Plus a letter he sent home from Hollywood ("Groucho just rang up to say he's calling for us in the morning. . .").

Next door is the airy Hugh Lane gallery, its big draw is the painstakingly reconstructed London studio-cum-tip where Dublin-born Francis Bacon spent most of his working life.

As the artist admits in a screened 1985 TV interview with Melvyn Bragg: "I like a chaotic atmosphere." With its half-empty tins of paint, old newspapers, carrier bags, champagne cases, battered record player and abandoned dressing gown, it looks as though a burglar has trashed it while Bacon's back was turned.

We have dinner at Fire, a smart, friendly restaurant with an innovative menu (beetroot and pear salad, seared tuna with quail's eggs). It's in Dawson Street, just round the corner from the wonderful National Museum of Natural History, our last stop on the bus. Known as "the dead zoo" by some, it has recently reopened after a three-year refurbishment but is still as endearingly old-fashioned and Victorian as the Leprechaun Museum is new-fangled.

It's heaving with families eyeballing gorillas, armadillos and legions of creatures with strange names such as paca, golden agouti, oribi and common suni.

Nothing is as small as the long-snouted pouched mouse which is truly the leprechaun of the animal kingdom.

THE KNOWLEDGE:
Cities Direct (01242 536900/www.citiesdirect.co.uk) offers two nights at the Trinity Capital Hotel from £199pp (two sharing), B&B, including return flights from Gatwick.

The Maldron Hotel (dialling from the UK: 00353 1485 0900/www.maldronhotels.com/hotel-smithfield) offers doubles from £79 per night (room only).

Dublin Bus Tours (1703 3028/www.dublinsightseeing.ie) offers Dublin sightseeing tours from £14 per adult, £5.25 per child.

Dublin Tourism: 0800 039 7000/ www.visitdublin.com