Ireland 2009

Hello from Becky. Today was an amazing day. We took the train into Bray where we met up with Andrea. Andrea truly is the one who got me my first real job at DU! She took us on a whirlwind (the actual wind wasn't too bad today by the way) tour of part of Ireland's countryside. We started off at Powerscort in Wicklow. The gardens there are amazing and beautiful! Allison and Liam - Papa found even more leprechaun holes. It is amazing we haven't seen the actual little people that live in them. Maybe after the pubs tonight! We walked around the grounds for awhile and the weather was perfect, blue sky, sunshine and NO wind. We had a cup of hot cocoa with Andrea and talked for awhile about the state that Ireland is currently in. Very interestinng to hear from an insider! After that we were off to see the Wicklow Mountains. The scenery was amazing! Dan found some ruins... ok there were actually a lot of tour groups that found them today and evertday... we didn't want to hurt Dan's feelings... This was in the town of Glendalough and the ruins were that of a Monestary dated back to the 6th century. That is really, really old. While there a brief wind and rain storm came through but we pushed on and insisted Andrea show us the lake she had been talking about. And the view was beautiful! At this point we started to see the sheep. They are all over the hillsides in the country. From here we went to lunch in the little town of Arklow at the Ulster Gardens Cafe. Again another amazing little town. Dan ventured outside his comfort zone and ordered a fish pie. First he had to ask Andrea what it was.... the answer... fish in a pie Dan! He is always good for a laugh. From there we went to her house in a small town in the county of Wexford. So small the name isn't even on our map! There are roughly 421 people in the town. On the way there we saw even more sheep. They are like cats here. Her home and town are very pretty. I got to see her two boys, Diego and Luca. I have not seen Diego since he wass a baby and it was really fun to see him now at the age of 9! We met Luca for the first time, he is an adorable 4 year old. They are very much into soccer but I tried to turn them on a little bit to hockey. Diego is familiar with it but Luca asked his dad how it is played as we were leaving. We had a nice visit at the house with the boys, Andrea and John. The gluten free treats were fabulous! After the visit we headed back out and were off again. The driving on the country roads here is really rather interestinng. I am still not convinced there really is enough room for two cars going opposite directions. And there really wasn't as both cars would swerve off the road... We saw more sheep. We went to a seaside pier at Flannigan's wharf and saw Irish surfers and another beautiful view of the sea. After this stop it was time for Andrea to take us back to Bray but she did make one last quick stop to show us either the oldest, biggest or something "est" tree in Ireland. Sadly the place was already closed. She is going to send a picture. She dropped us off in Bray, we said our good-byes and got back on the train to Dublin. Today was one of the best days yet. I got to catch up with a dear friend and see parts of Ireland we never would have seen with out her. And we saw lots of sheep.