It was Friday morning when she arrived and after we had breakfast and she got settled, she spent the afternoon wandering between shops on Grafton Street. Mariah and I met her after work in City Center and we had dinner in Temple Bar, had some gelato, and just wandered around town a bit. She was tired from her trip and we had big plans for the following day, so we called it a night fairly early and headed home.
Saturday marked the beginning of a big adventure and a first for me in Ireland: DRIVING… Mariah and I got up early and went to pick up the car. All I had to do was drive it back to our apartment, where we conveniently have a parking space. Despite the fact that it was much too early to be thinking that hard, we made it from the rental shop to home without any problem.
That wasn’t so bad…
After everyone was ready we began the big part of the adventure. We were venturing into the Wicklow “Mountains” to see a place called Glendalough which essentially means “Glen of Two Lakes” in Irish. It is the site of an old monastery and graveyard with one lake just at the edge of the monastery and the other up the hill a bit. The lakes are nestled comfortably between two hills and above the upper lake there is a small but beautiful waterfall. Mariah and I had been to Glendalough the first time we came to Ireland, but we really enjoyed it, so we thought we would share it with Emily since it is only about forty minutes outside of Dublin.Before we could see all of that wonderfulness, though, we had to get there. We had purchased some good maps for this occasion and plotted a course that took us on the motorway (freeway) for a short bit, and then off onto the back roads, through villages, on our way to see the Wizard of Glendalough. Motorways are fairly scarce in Ireland and you inevitably are going to end up on the winding roads with stonewalls or hedges pressed closely against the invisible line marking the edge of what would be your lane if it were actually described that way. This is good, for the most part, because the countryside of Ireland is decidedly one of my favorite parts and you can’t get much out of that if you are speeding along a freeway. And now for the scary part…
Actually…it wasn’t that bad…amazingly…
Of course you are driving on the wrong side of the road, so that’s different, and concentration is required for you to stay there. Turns tended to be the place where I felt I needed to pay the most attention, so that I didn’t accidentally turn into the wrong lane (which would be bad, as you might imagine). Fortunately this didn’t happen. I found that it wasn’t that hard to keep in mind which side of the road I should be on, primarily because I was on the opposite side of the car.
Take everything to the left of the radio and stick, pick it up, and drop it on the opposite side of the car, and that’s what sitting in a left side car is like. Everything is in the same place that it should be except…you…and the gearshift. That was really the hardest thing to work with: Shifting with my left hand. The gears are in the same order they would be in the US, so first ends up being farthest away from you, not to mention that my left hand is much less coordinated than my right and definitely lacking in the pre-programmed movements repetitively knocked into my brain from learning to drive in my old ’69 VW Bug. Shifting was really the only thing I struggled with. I was even able to carry on conversations and glance at the odd bit of scenery.
We made it, then, to Glendalough safe and sound. Despite having been there before, we never had done the whole walk up to the second lake and the waterfall, so this time we did – a good three or four hours worth I would say. The place there is just magnificent. It’s no wonder the monks chose it as a place of introspection and contemplation. I’m not the only one that thinks it’s a cool place, either, because you can see it and it’s surrounding areas in a number of movies. One that I recognized specifically was King Arthur (the new one with Clive Owen). When they are fleeing the Vikings and cross a big frozen lake, that’s the lake I am almost positive. The movie was definitely filmed in Ireland and in that area.We spent a good part of the day there just walking the trails and then headed off to a little village that Mariah is fond of called Enniskerry where we had lunch. There is a big waterfall nearby Enniskerry, called the Powerscourt Waterfall, so we got to stop and show Emily that as well. We had seen it before, but the last time it was just pouring rain, so this time we got to see it without feeling we were under it.
We also tried to go up and see Johny Fox’s Pub, “The highest pub in Ireland”, but on our way up there ended up being a accident involving a tractor and a car which was completely blocking off the road. No one was injured, fortunately, but we had to skip the highest pub and headed home for a relaxing evening. We made it back without issue and I am now confident that I can drive on the wrong side of the road without too much difficulty. So…yay for that!
On Sunday we slept in. Well…I woke up, but everyone else slept in, so I just quietly waited until everyone else woke up. I’m nice like that. By the time we had finished getting ready and making a big breakfast and whatnot we only really had time for one attraction. We ended up deciding on Kilmainham Gail (pronounced and meaning jail). Yes, we had one opportunity to go see something that day and we went to a jail… It’s a really cool jail, as jails go… We had gotten a lot of recommendations to see this historical site, but had never gotten there, so having Em in town gave us a good reason to get out there and take a look.
The jail is where a lot of the revolutionaries from the uprisings against the British government were held and executed, and then was used after the Republic of Ireland was established to imprison and execute people during the Irish civil war. For any history buffs out there this was a great place to go because it gave a good deal of history in their museum about these events. And for those who aren’t that big into history, but still find it interesting, it presents the information in a fairly concise way… The building itself is also very interesting, as were the conditions for prisoners. You can see Kilmainham Gail in the movie Michael Collins (recommended), which is about the Irish uprising and the birth of the Republic – specific to the role of Michael Collins.We then made another stop at the “oldest pub in Dublin”, The Brazen Head. We just had a drink there…and some craic… and then headed off for dinner and another easy evening. Emily never saw the real Dublin - the, drunken, stumbling, vomiting Dublin - but I think she was OK with that.
Monday we had to work, but Emily made a full day adventuring in the city and then we met her in town again where we had set up a dinner with friends graciously hosted by our friends Bruno and Joao. I try to do a dinner like this when friends are in town because my favorite part of Dublin is the people I have met here, so we try to share that with visitors as much as we can. Along with many of our regular multi-national friends and guests, Mariah was able to invite one of her work mates, so I got to meet someone new as well, since I have yet to see most of the folks she knows there… They are shy...It was a great evening, though unfortunately completely lacking in photo-documentation, and I think Emily got to enjoy a bit of what we think Dublin is all about.
For her last day Emily had the morning in Dublin again, then had lunch with me and afterward I got her on a bus heading toward the airport and she made it back to New York only to begin packing for her big trip back to Oregon and the new job.
GOOD LUCK EM! WE LOVE YOU!
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