If there's one optional experience on the entire tour worth rearranging your day for, it's this one. Tucked deep in the Wicklow Mountains, Glendalough — the "Valley of Two Lakes" — is a place of genuine, hushed magic: a 6th-century monastic settlement founded by St Kevin, crumbling round towers and ancient stone churches scattered through woodland, all wrapped around two glassy glacial lakes. Photographs genuinely don't do it justice. This is the Ireland you came here to see.

In 1759, Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease on this very site at St James's Gate — a story so bold it's practically Irish folklore in itself. Today, the old fermentation plant has been transformed into a seven-storey visitor experience shaped like a giant pint glass, taking you through the history, brewing process, and advertising legacy of Ireland's most famous export.

If you take our word for anything on this trip, take it for this: Taylor's Three Rock is consistently ranked by travellers as one of the absolute best nights of the entire Britain and Ireland tour. Expect a full Irish dinner, award-winning Irish dancers who have genuinely won world championships, a phenomenal singer with West End credits (including a run in Les Misérables), and a night of traditional Irish music and craic that is, without exaggeration, hilarious from start to finish.