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Dublin: Wicklow, Kilkenny & Glendalough Tour
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From €45 per person
This is one of the most popular day trips out of Dublin - and it’s easy to see why. In a single day you get the ruins, lakes, and waterfalls of Glendalough, the scenery of the Wicklow Mountains (lamb spotting very much included), and free time to explore the medieval streets of Kilkenny at your own pace.
The tour runs from 08:00 to 18:00. Both Glendalough and Kilkenny come with optional free walking tours included, so you can go deep on the history or simply wander and soak it up. In Kilkenny, a red ale and something from a good local pub or café is entirely the right call.
Tickets are limited - it’s a busy one.
At Glendalough, take the optional walking tour. Your guide will take you past the round tower - thirty metres of 10th-century mica-slate, with the doorway three and a half metres up the wall so the monks could pull the ladder up when the Vikings came - and through the monastic city: cathedral, seven churches, a graveyard still in use. The history here is genuinely 6th century. St Kevin founded the monastery, people followed him in, and it grew into what was effectively a medieval town. The optional tour makes the ruins make sense.
The Green Road walk between the Lower and Upper Lakes is 3 km flat - you can do it comfortably in an hour if you want to see both lakes without breaking sweat. The Upper Lake is quieter and the views back along the valley are the better ones. If you have time for only one thing beyond the monastic site, make it the walk to the Upper Lake.
In Kilkenny, the optional walking tour covers the Medieval Mile - castle to cathedral via the Tholsel, Rothe House, Black Abbey, and the Butter Slip. It’s 1.5 km of the most intact medieval streetscape in Ireland. If you skip the walking tour, at minimum walk up from the castle to Tynan’s Bridge House on John’s Bridge - it’s reckoned by most of the town to be the best pint of stout in Kilkenny, no music, no screens, tiled floor, mahogany bar, generations of the same family. Worth fifteen minutes of free time.
Food in Kilkenny: Foodworks on Parliament Street does proper brunch and a well-put-together lunch that won’t slow you down for the journey back. If you want something faster, the cafés along High Street are fine and none of them will hold you up. The castle gates have benches if the weather’s good and you’ve brought your own. Dig deeper into Glendalough and Kilkenny on your own time.