Going Down South

Today we went on a Wicklow day tour to see the countryside to the south of Dublin. I had to add our tour guide/bus driver Stephen to my "loves of my life" list because he was nerdy-looking, witty, and hilarious, and disgustingly Irish. He took us down the coast line, past Howth (which apparently has the best fresh sea food in Dublin), past the Irish version of Hollywood (Bono and Enya live there...), and out to the Glendalough area (which means "valley of two rivers" in Gaelic, to anyone who may doubt my purely academic reasons for coming here ;]).

So I will let the pictures do most of the landscape describing because that is honestly not my strength as a writer, and I could not by any means do justice to the places I've seen. I will however mention some of the interesting things that Stephen (love of my life) told us.

• The open land is uninhabited because it is made up of peat bog, which is 90% water and therefore not exactly the most stable base for a house



• Dead bodies of warriors killed 2,000 ago were preserved with hair, nails, and skin were discovered in the bogs only a few decades ago (sorry, I find slightly morbid things fascinating)



• Guiness Lake was named as such because it's in the shape of a pint glass, and the Irish added a buttload of sand on one of the banks to make it look like the foam head (I love alcoholics)



• Pretty much every movie with beautiful landscape scenes was filmed in this area (Stephen mentioned more recent ones like Braveheart, Excalibur, P.S. I Love You, and Leap Year)

In addition to all the breath-taking places I saw, today was a very Irish food day too (I swear I'm not trying to make this a food blog, but this is ME + EATING we're talking about). During our trip, we took a lunch break at a pub in Glendalough, where we ate Irish Stew (beef, beef, beef, beef, carrots, carrots, onion) and dranks some more Guiness. OH, and the lovely Stephen provided us with some shots of Jameson Whiskey (which I actually LOVED, despite my previous feelings concerning whiskey...especially the kind packaged in single serve plastic pouches). And finally, when we got back to the Dublin city center, mother and I went to Breshoff's to eat the "alledgedly" (that's Stephen's favorite word) best fish & chips in the city. I can say in all honesty that I would gladly eat beer battered deep fried cod and fries every day if I wouldn't die of a heart attack in a week.

Basically, day three = GREAT SUCCESS.

***ALSO**** If you want to see more pictures, I'm putting them all up on Facebook so check them out!!!