A Week in Ireland
Hello!
My husband and I are signed up for A Week in Ireland, small group tour, in September 2026. We have been rereading the itinerary and note that the last day and a half of the tour we are entirely on our own, with the exception of the farewell dinner. For those of you who have already taken this tour, did you find that you had too much time on your own? Other thoughts? Thanks for your feedback.
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We noted this change on the 2026 itineraries when a mailer came in ahead of our trip this past summer. I would say that we got something of a "soft launch" of this change during our trip. Our trip originally had Dublin like this: Arrive Thursday evening, have about ~2 hours between arrival and dinner. Friday morning we had structured activity until noon (only listed as a bus tour on the itinerary) and then an unstructured afternoon. Saturday we had an out-of-town excursion to Glendalough that was planned until 1 p.m. with an unstructured afternoon. About 2 or so weeks before our trip, we were notified that the Glendalough portion would be cancelled. It was replaced with a group tour of the Book of Kells which meant we essentially had an unstructured day after 10:30 a.m.
In practice, I appreciated having more time in Dublin to do things. While the bus tour was nice, there's a lot that you breezed by without much time to take them in. The first day of our tour, the full itinerary spelled out that we would visit the EPIC museum and St. Patricks with the bus. It was great to have the transport but the tour of St. Patricks felt a little rushed. (I would have liked to dwell at EPIC a little more but the time given for it was pretty much the exact right amount to see everything.)
Had we known, like you do, that we had a full day and a half that were unstructured I probably would have rearranged some of our self-directed activities. We packed in the Guinness Factory on Friday which ended up being very busy; we would have opted for an earlier start and then move back into the city center. We also would have chosen to move some other activities around (picked another night for Temple Bar, we had actually got our own tickets for the Book of Kells in advance and therefore didn't really plan out Saturday thinking we had two activities.)
However, I really enjoyed getting out and walking the city in the vicinity of The Shelbourne. In just one afternoon you can visit the Irish National Gallery, the National Archaeology Museum (I recommend), Oscar Wilde's House, the Kennedy Pub, Sweny's Pharmacy and Grafton Street without needing to take a cab. You'll pass Merrion Park, the Georgian Homes and Irish Parliament.
EPIC is a short cab ride away and near other points of interest on the north of the Liffey. One thing I was trying to do before we knew it was on the trip was to figure out how to factor in St. Patricks and Guinness into a larger "west" Dublin trip to better make cabs/ubers work. There's a good amount to do to keep you busy in Dublin and a lot of it should be at your fingertips, but it might be nice to have one morning structured and then more time to as you want.
Another note, we did not have the Waterford stop on our itinerary which seems to have been due to the Waterford Crystal office not operating tours on that specific day that week. I imagine the Waterford stop shifts the timing of Thursday and may mean your day is a little more structured with less time.