After 9 days of adventures around Ireland it was time to return to Dublin, but we had one last stop to make on the way back. We woke up to an absolutely beautiful day so we decided to stop at the Glendalough National Park. The park has 2 sections. The first part has a hotel and bar along with a church and cemetery. Odd for a national park but worth a quick visit. After walking around there for about a half hour we headed to the second part of the park to do some hiking. They have an out and back trail that runs alongside a picturesque lake in a valley between two mountains. After you pass the lake you can go off trail and climb a small mountain with a waterfall. The best part was passing by billy goats and sheep perched on the hillside. The hike took us a couple of hours but the weather was perfect and a refreshing change from all the cloudy cold and damp Irish summer days. After the hike we jumped back in the car and headed back to Dublin where we dropped off our rental car and spent the rest of the day at the legendary Temple Bar. We had an overpriced Guinness and enjoyed some live music even though we were told that it was nothing more than a tourist trap that real Dublin natives won’t go near. After that we did some souvenir shopping before going to dinner at the Boxty House. A Boxty is a traditional Irish potato pancake that we couldn’t leave Ireland without trying. We ended up feasting like little pigs and really enjoying the meal. There’s a quote in Dublin that goes… “Boxty on the griddle, Boxty on the pan, If you can’t make Boxty You will never find a man!”. We capped the night off at our favorite Hookah lounge where we met another group of travelers from Tunisia who spent the night convincing us that Tunisia should be added to our next trip.
We woke up to another dark rainy day but were determined to get out and see a couple of things we missed last week. We began the day at Trinity college, Irelands premiere University. You are allowed to go in and walked the grounds for free so we spent about an hour wandering around checking out the 450 year old architecture and reading about all the famous people who have attended the college. The library contains a unique 900 year old famous version of the Bible but the line was really long and it costs $30 per person just to look at it in it’s case so we skipped that and headed down to the river. Here we got a tour of the Jeannie Johnston, a legendary Irish emigration ship used during the Great Potato famine. It was the only ship of it’s time to never loss a passenger. Our guide was a young lady who obviously loved her country, it’s history and her job and it showed. She made the tour fun and interesting. Next we headed to Dublins Temple Bar for one last Guinness and some live music before having our last Irish dinner.
