Waterways Visitor Centre

Lonely Planet review

If you absolutely must know about the construction and operation of Ireland's canals, then you'll dig a visit to this interpretive centre upstream from the Grand Canal Docks, which explores the history and personality of Ireland's canals and waterways through models (if they're working), audiovisual displays and panels. Otherwise, admiring the 'box on the docks' - as this modern building is nicknamed - is plenty good enough for the average enthusiast of artificial waterways.

If you are here in summer and are wondering why it needs to employ a security guard, it's to keep local kids from storming up to the centre's roof and using it as a diving platform into the basin. Sometimes the kids content themselves with diving off the shed on the bridge, terrorising those on board the Viking Splash Tour boats that pass beneath.