Day Two: Wicklow and Glendalough

Saturday, 27 June 2009

Today, we had schedules a tour of the Wicklow Mountains and of Glendalough. The Wicklow Mountains are just south of Dublin. We woke up, had breakfast downstairs, and went to meet the bus on O'Connell Street. We ended up in the wrong queue and were delighted to find that, instead of the sleek silver year-3000 tour bus, we were actually scheduled to go in the smaller red minibus. Our driver was great, introducing us to such gems such as calling Dublin's millenial monument--a tall silver spire that resembles a nice-looking cell-phone tower--the Stiffy by the Liffey rather than its proper name of the Spire of Light.

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Day Three: Malahide and the Dangers of the Irish Pub

28 June 2009

Today, we headed north of Dublin to one of the suburban seaside towns, Malahide. In my preparatory reading, I had learned that Malahide was once a small village that became one of the more popular Irish vacation destinations, a fact that would later be confirmed in a conversation on a train with two residents of Malahide, who both lamented the loss of their "sleepy little town." It rather reminded me of a much scaled-down version of our Ocean City in Maryland.

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