[Photo provided to China Daily]

Ireland's Ancient East is the country's most recently developed tourist trail. It has four distinct themes featuring ancient Ireland, Early Christian Ireland, medieval Ireland and Anglo Ireland. The trail will enable visitors to explore the country's pre-historic passage graves, early Christian monasteries, Viking settlements and medieval cities.

Visitors can also experience first-hand the Irish music and dance featured in the hit show Riverdance, which has regularly toured China since 2002.

In addition, Ireland is home to a wide variety of Chinese restaurants which are very popular with Chinese visitors, and there are also plenty of golf courses for lovers of fairways and greens.

Rain is frequent in winter, so the best time to visit Ireland is from May to September.

There are currently no direct flights between China and Ireland. Chinese visitors can choose Air China, China Eastern, China Southern Airlines, British Airways or Virgin Atlantic to fly direct to the UK, and then transfer to a flight to Ireland. Many airlines also have connecting flights to the island through European hubs such as Amsterdam, Paris and Frankfurt.

At the moment, Etihad Airways has operations from Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Hong Kong to Dublin, via Abu Dhabi, while Emirates connects China's Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong with Dublin via Dubai.

A 13-day group trip for August costs roughly 23,500 yuan ($4,027) per person on Ctrip.