Where Molly Bloom Said Yes
Every year on June 16th, Dublin celebrates Bloomsday — the day James Joyce set his masterpiece Ulysses. The novel follows Leopold Bloom’s wanderings through the streets and shores of the city in 1904. On this day, people dress in Edwardian costume, read passages aloud in pubs, and eat Gorgonzola sandwiches. They raise a glass to one of the greatest novels ever written.
Yet most of the Bloomsday trail winds through the city centre. There’s a quieter, wilder, more romantic piece of the story waiting just 30 minutes away on the DART.
Howth Head is where Joyce’s greatest novel finds its heart.
The Rhododendrons on Howth Head
At the very close of Ulysses, in the famous final pages of Molly Bloom’s interior monologue, her thoughts drift back to a day on Howth Head — sixteen years before the events of the novel — when Leopold proposed to her among the rhododendrons on the hill.
She remembers lying in the flowers, the warmth of the day, the long kiss, and Leopold telling her the sun shone for her. Finally, in the closing lines of one of the most celebrated novels in the English language, she answers him:
“…yes I said yes I will Yes.”
Indeed, it is one of the most famous sentences in all of literature — and it was written about this peninsula, these hills, and this view over Dublin Bay.
So when you walk the woodland paths of Howth in June, with the rhododendrons in full bloom and Dublin Bay spread out below you, it doesn’t take much imagination to feel the weight of that scene.
Walking in Molly’s Landscape
With Howth Adventures
There’s no better way to experience the Howth that Joyce wrote about than out on the trails with Howth Adventures, Howth’s award-winning regenerative tourism company.
The guided hikes move through the same heathland, clifftops, and wild coastal paths that form the landscape of Molly’s memory. In June, the peninsula is at its most beautiful — rhododendrons flowering across the hillside, the light long and golden, Dublin Bay glittering below.
Howth Coastal Hike (3 hrs | from €39) Follow clifftop paths with sweeping views
Out on the Water
Ireland’s Eye Ferries
After the hike, take to the water with Ireland’s Eye Ferries and sail around Ireland’s Eye — the small uninhabited island that sits just off Howth Harbour and appears in Joyce’s own imagination of Dublin Bay.
Joyce knew this coastline well. The waters around Howth, the bay, the island — all of it fed into his vision of Dublin as a city shaped by the sea. Seen from the water on a June afternoon, with the peninsula rising behind you and the city in the distance, it’s a view that feels genuinely timeless
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Start Planning Your Trip
Getting There
Jump on the Howth-bound DART from Connolly, Tara Street, or Pearse Station. About 30 minutes, no changes. Pick up a Leap Card for the best value on the day. Bloomsday falls on Tuesday 16th June 2026. The rhododendrons are at their peak in June — if there’s one day of the year to be on Howth Head, this is it.
A Bloomsday Worth Remembering
Dublin’s Bloomsday celebrations are full of joy, costume, and literary colour — and they absolutely belong in the city. But if you want to find the quiet, human heart of Ulysses, the moment the whole novel builds towards, you have to come to Howth. Stand on the hill among the rhododendrons, look out over Dublin Bay, and say yes.
