Get ready for an explosion of
pictures and descriptions of the best weekend ever. Something you should know before I get
started – Ireland is the best place in the world. This is a widely accepted fact
worldwide. It basically goes without
saying.
We arrived in Ireland and hopped on a bus to take us into Dublin. Some policemen got on at a bus stop and started checking tickets. I started panicking; remembering our awful encounter with Italian police on the bus in Rome, but this was Ireland. Home of the nicest and best people in the world (with the best accents in the world). They checked our tickets, and saw us looking at a map. They showed us how to get where we were headed, and proceeded to chat with us about Ireland and our visit to Ireland. When they heard we were headed to Glendalough (pronounced “GLEN-da-lokh”), they informed us that Glendalough is the most haunted place in Ireland and asked us if we wanted them to accompany us to Glendalough (asking what our hotel’s name was and what our room number was). They were a group of 5 older, stout, married Irishmen and were just kidding around and entertaining us (oh, and you have to imagine that half of this conversation is going on with amazing Irish accents, and is therefore the best conversation I had had thus far on my study abroad). I, however, thought for a split second that they were serious and was about to jump on a chance to marry an Irishman so I could stay in Ireland forever. This, you see, was the objective of my trip to Ireland – marry an Irishman and live in the Irish countryside (spoiler alert – I failed).
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| Spire of Dublin |
We had about an hour and a half before we caught the bus that would take us to Glendalough, so we walked around Dublin and got some lunch. Dublin is a lot like London, New York, and Rome in its big city feel and look. Busy, lots of people, tons of tourist shops, monuments here and there, etc. However, Ireland was different from all the other big cities in the fact that is was filled with smiling IRISH PEOPLE! Lifelong goal of being surrounded by Irish people – completed.
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| Glendalough! |
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| Countryside time! |
We took the Glendalough Bus from
Dublin to Glendalough and got to see miles of stunning Irish countryside and
billions of sheep. Ireland is FILLED
with sheep. There are sheep basically
every other plot of land. And Irish
sheep are much more colorful than normal sheep.
They the tops of the sheep blue or green, probably to differentiate between
herds or something like that. Or maybe
the leprechauns did it.
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| Blue sheep. Quite rare. |
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| Fancy blue sheep. |
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| A real Irish cow. |
Glendalough is in County Wicklow,
and means “glen of two lakes.” It is
situated in the Wicklow Mountains and has tons of picturesque walks, beautiful
lakes, mountains, and fantastic ancient buildings and ruins. We decided to do one of the shorter walks
that took you around the major historic sites.
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| Yes. I AM holding the tower. |
The first site we saw was St. Kevin’s Church, the graveyard, and the
round tower. St. Kevin’s was a small
bricked church complete with a steeple.
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| Inside St. Kevin's Church |
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| St. Kevin's |
About 20 feet away was the famous round tower that is probably the most
iconic marker in Glendalough. The round
tower is a bell tower used by early Irish monestaries in around 900-1200 AD to summon
the monks to prayer. This tower is 100
feet tall and had six floors with wooden landings (that are no longer there). The door to the tower is 12 feet above the
ground, and was reached by using a ladder that they could pull up after them to
keep enemies from attacking the tower. The
tower is soooo tall and breathtakingly impressive. That tower was a perfect little model too,
because I basically took a picture from EVERY angle of it. By the end of my trip to Ireland I think
about half my pictures were just of the round tower.
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K, you'll have to zoom in to see how tiny I am
at the bottom of the tower. It was HUGE. |
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There, standing a bit closer so you can
actually see me. |
The area around the tower and the church was
a graveyard filled with hundreds of Celtic gravestones, crumbling under years of
age.
The walk took us around the smaller
lake around scenic areas filled with blue-backed sheep, billions of frog eggs,
a couple deer, Irish natives (YES!), trees aplenty (Irish trees, to be exact),
and gorgeous landscapes. The walk was
easy and beautiful and full of Irish scenery – everything I could ever ask
for.
After the walk we went to the
visitor’s center to ask for directions to our B&B. The lady working the front desk was the
nicest little old Irish lady! She kept
telling “that’ll be grand” and “you’ll love that.” She was adorable and basically became our
best friend. Unfortunately best friend
old woman gave us wrong directions to our hotel. She sent us to the left down the road towards
a B&B called “Riverwood,” when we should’ve gone to the right towards our
B&B called “Riverside.” We figured
out what had happened about half an hour down the wrong road (by this time I
was freaking out a bit that we wouldn’t be able to find our B&B and would
have to just sleep outside (which may not have been that bad, because I was
assuming Gerard Butler would come save me and sing songs from Phantom me as he leapt
out of the bushes)). About an hour and a
half we finally made it to our B&B, which was a cute little house owned by
a couple who rent out 3 of their rooms to tourists. They told us about the best pub to go to in
town (really, it was the only pub.
Glendalough is a pretty small town) and chatted with us about how
amazing Ireland is. They were a sweet
little couple with fantastic accents and I loved them, even if the husband was wearing a creepy rubber suit that
looked like it was a cross between a biking and scuba-diving outfit.
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K, I didn't even edit this picture if you can believe that.
Look at the little sheeplings in the background!! |
The wife gave us a lift to the pub
that night around 7, because it was pretty dark out. It was so nice of her, and she had to take us
in two trips because their cars only fit 5 people. All the cars in Europe are TINY. The pub wasn’t very far away (a bit less than
a mile away) and the wife left us with a “torch” for walking back home. The pub was bursting with drunk, happy
Irishfolk. Precious little souls. I was bummed because they have live Irish
music on Saturdays, so we just missed hearing a live Irish band by one
day! But the food was great and the ambiance
was really fun. Our B&B owner warned
us to beware of Irish men because, “they’ll charm you over a glass of Guinness
but in the morning they won’t remember your name and will be off on their way.” Words of wisdom to be sure. Too bad all the men at the pub were either
with their wives or were old, balding, portly Irish men who didn’t talk to us,
or I would’ve tried to charm one of them.
Alas, it seems I will not be an Irish bride any time soon.
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| Our B&B |
We left the pub around 11:30 and
were absolutely exhausted from only getting around an hour of sleep the night
before and from walking around all day long.
The tiredness wore off pretty quickly though as we started freaking
ourselves out walking home in the dark.
The road we had to take to get back to our B&B was a narrow two-way
road with trees lining both sides of the road.
We linked arms and started running down the road, freaking ourselves out
with every sound we heard. Then we saw
some far lights in front of us a ways down the road, coming up fast. We started shrieking and rushed to move to
the side of the road. Unfortunately, I completely
forgot which side of the road they drive on in Ireland, and started to dash to
one side, but then changed my mind to go to the other. I’ve decided that in cases of “flight or
fight” I’m definitely a “flight” person, because in my mind I started telling
myself, “Serpentine! Serpentine! It’ll confuse them and throw them off your
trail! It’ll confuse them and they’ll
stop or swerve out of the way!” Luckily I
spotted my friends off to the left side and I joined them in safety. I’m glad I didn’t get the chance to put my
defensive strategy to the test. After
being scared out of our wits we sprinted all the way back home, laughing and
yelling all the way.
