Back from Dublin

I m sick and tired of travelling by bus and I will never again drive 4 and a half hours in a coach from Cork to Dublin. I am glad to be back in Kinsale, but also sad that Luisa left.

I really enjoyed the time with her and it was nice to have a friend visiting.

No let me tell you about our trip to Dublin and the Wicklow Mountains.
Visiting Dubling a second time, I can´t still find anything charming about it. It´s just another big city with a lot of tourists.
We arrived at around 17 o´clock in Dublin and it took us about an hour to find the youth hostel. The map we had didn´t show anything outside the inner city. So we actually walked in a circle to find the hostel. One good thing was that we found a Starbucks on the way.  It was the best to go double tall vanilla latte I had in a long time. The Irish might be good in brewing beer or making whiskey, but they still have to learn a lot about making good coffee.

The barista at Sbux wasn´t really helpful in giving directions, so we just called the hostel to guide as and siehe da we were just around the corner.
We stayed at the Times Hostel on Camden Place. If you ever need a hostel in Dublin this is the place to go. It´s close to St. Stephen´s Green, nice stuff and clean. We even had an ensuite bathroom.
A little tired from the travel, we refreshed and went to explore Dublin.  We´ve already seen Grafton Street, the expensive shopping area, and decided to visit Dublin Castle, City Hall, H´Penny Bridge, Temple Bar and O´Connel Street. We endet our tour at the Temple Bar and had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. You probably think that we should have gone into a tradtional Irish pub for dinner, but we planned on doing it the next night. Besides, we already had a traditional Irish breakfast with black and white pudding, sausage, bacon and egg.

And just so you know, the burger at the Hard Rock Cafe was delicious!!

The next morning, Luisa and I went on a WildWicklowTour into the Wicklow Mountains.
The Wicklow Mountains are southeast of Dublin and is the location of several major sights such as the monastic complex of Glendalough. Movies like Brave Heart, P.S. I love you or Leap year have been filmed in this region. The Wicklow Mountains are also called the "Garden of Ireland" and having been there I can understand why. The landscape is amazing, the variety of colours in particular.
It was foggy and windy in the morning, so we couldn´t enjoy the full view of the mountains.

Our first stop was the major ferry habour Dun Laoghaire where we picked up the last passengers, ayoung couple from Germany. From there we left the coast and drove land inwards towards the Mountains. Our next stop was hamlet of Avoca, where the Avoca Handweavers produce colourful tweeds in the oldest handweaving mill in Ireland, operating since 1723.
Leaving Avoca behind our tour went on on the Military Road through the mountains. The military road was built by British soldiers in the 18th century.  Following the road we past a little piece of Germany - a grave yard with 138 German soldiers. The Irish government gave the piece of land to the German government so the bodies could rest in piece on German territory. We also passed the highest city in Ireland - Roundwood at 238m above sea level. Even Stühlingen beats that ;)
We stopped on a high point, looking down to the Guiness Estate. It was so windy you could ly in the wind. It felt like flying.
Before we arrived at our final destination - Glendaloug - we had lunch at an Irish pub. There was only one Asian person on our tour bus and I was almost missing them. Arriving at the pub for lunch a whole group of Japanese was already there eating all the Fish and Chips and taking pictures of everything.
Glendalough - the valley of the two lakes, harbours one of Ireland´s most atmopsheric monastic sites. The Monastery was established in the 6th century by St. Kevin. The settlement was sacked time and times again (28 times) by the Vikings, but nevertheless flourished for over 600 years. The monastery was built to educate the pagan.
Our driver and tour guide told us a little bit about the monastery and graveyard and than we had time to walk around the two lakes and enjoy the landscape. Coming back from the walk around the lake, everybody got a glass of Jameson Whiskey. The whiskey wasn´t the best one, probably a cheap sample.
From Glendalough we drove back to Dublin where we arrived around 4pm.
As we hadn´t seen Trinity College yesterday we went to see it today. After that we went for a little shopping spree and than went back to the hostel, where we enjoyed some crepes and ice cream.

The next morning, we got up around 8am as Luisa had to be at the airport by 10am and I had to be at the Heuston Station by 9.40am.
After a very short goodbye, the bus came earlier as expected, we both left Dublin.