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Dublin City, Coastline & Wicklow Mountains Luxury Day Tour
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From €6 per person
This private luxury day tour packs a lot into nine hours - Dublin city, the South Dublin coastline, and a long run through County Wicklow, which earns its reputation as the Garden of Ireland pretty quickly once you’re out of the city.
The morning starts with Dublin’s historic Georgian Quarter and the Government buildings, then the route heads south through the coastal villages of Blackrock, Dalkey, and Killiney. Along the way you’ll spot celebrity homes and old coastal military towers, before stopping in Bray for coffee or tea with views out over the Irish Sea.
From Bray, you head into Wicklow Mountains National Park. The drive itself is beautiful throughout. At Glendalough, you’ll explore the ruins of the early Christian monastic city - a remarkable site with a round tower that’s stood for over a thousand years. There’s a light scenic walk through the glacial valley, and lunch at the Wicklow Heather restaurant in the village. The area has also been used as a filming location for Hollywood productions over the years.
The afternoon continues deeper into the Wicklow Mountains, taking in the Guinness Lake (Lough Tay), the bridge made famous by the film “P.S. I Love You”, and Powerscourt Waterfall, the highest in Ireland. The day rounds off at Powerscourt House and Gardens - an 18th-century Palladian mansion with Italian gardens that National Geographic ranked third in the world’s top ten gardens - set against the backdrop of the Great Sugarloaf Mountain. A complimentary Irish whiskey is waiting there before the easy 45-minute drive back to Dublin.
Your qualified Irish guide looks after you throughout: providing commentary on everything you see, answering questions, and keeping the day moving without rushing it. The physical exertion is minimal - it’s a leisurely day with outstanding scenery from start to finish.
The coastal leg through Killiney is one of the better stretches of the whole day. The Vico Road runs along the clifftop between Killiney and Dalkey with the sea below - it’s named after Vico Equense on the Bay of Naples, and the comparison is not as far-fetched as it sounds. On a clear morning, you can see the mountains of Wales from Killiney Hill. It’s a drive-past on this tour, but the guide can point out what’s behind the walls and hedges if you ask - several well-known residents, none of them available.
At Glendalough, the scenic valley walk is the Lower Lake to Upper Lake path - flat, about three kilometres return, and it takes you past the round tower, the cathedral ruins, and the seven churches of the early monastic city. Lunch is at the Wicklow Heather in Laragh (the actual village, 1.5 km east of the monastic site). Their dining room is walled in first-edition Irish literature - the books are real and the food is good. The Wicklow lamb and Irish beef dishes are worth noting when you’re choosing.
The Glendalough round tower is 30 metres of mica-slate and granite with a doorway three and a half metres up the wall - monks pulled the ladder up when the Vikings came, and the design tells you exactly what the valley’s main concern was for a few centuries. The guide will tell you when the roof was rebuilt (1876, after a lightning strike) and from the original stones, which matters for anyone interested in how these things survive.
Powerscourt Waterfall and Powerscourt House and Gardens are both in Enniskerry, a small estate village 40 minutes south of Dublin. The waterfall is 121 metres - the highest continuous-flow waterfall in the Republic - and the House, designed by Richard Cassels between 1731 and 1741, was gutted by fire in 1974 and has been open as a restored shell since 1996. National Geographic ranked the Italian gardens third in the world, behind Versailles and Kew. If you ever come back on your own terms, the Sugar Loaf walk from the GAA car park on the R116 takes about two and a half hours return and puts you above everything you drove through today.
Powerscourt is a fine way to end the day. The waterfall is 121 metres and if you’ve timed the afternoon right, you’ll have it relatively to yourselves before closing. The whiskey at Powerscourt House tastes better after a day in the mountains than it would have at nine in the morning.