Day 24: Glendalough, Sally Gap and Skryne
Mom and Dad woke up early on Thursday and headed up to Dublin to pick up Clara and Eoghan - welcome to Ireland!
Jerry, Mark and I headed out for breakfast and brought some back to Claire who was soaking up sleep time since last night's sleep was spent on a plane. We packed up, checked out, and started our 40 minute drive to Glendalough, which means Valley of the Two Lakes. The two lakes are very creatively named Upper Lake and Lower Lake. It's a spiritual place as St Kevin retreated there in the early 500s. He found it peaceful and a great place to find God, in the solitude of nature, away from others. Others thought the same, though, and St Kevin was soon joined by followers. They created a simple but efficient living space in the 6th century. In the 900s, the Vikings invaded Glendalough as mostly everything was set up for them. The land and structures have remained a Catholic space. There were lots of tourists there with us on this sunny Thursday.
We started off at Lower Lake, walked around Round Tower, an old church, and priests' home. Round Tower, pictured below, was fascinating. The lowest entrance is 12ft above the ground, so you need a ladder to enter. Then the tower was used as a meditative/prayerful practice of climbing circulating stairs. It was high enough that it could also be used as a vantage point for oncoming threats. In the case of a threat, the ladder would be lifted up and placed inside the Round Tower, and the door would be locked so they were safe from invaders.
We took a beautiful trail to Upper Lake where there was another church, or what's left of it, as well as St Kevin's sleeping place. We couldn't get to it, but apparently if you walk around Upper Lake you can view St Kevin's bed nicely from the other side of the lake. We had three maps all showing different locations of this bed, on top of the opposing opinions of fellow tourists walking by so instead of an endless search we said we'd look for it on Google Earth.
After our walk through Glendalough we drove a bit to find a lunch spot that had fewer tourists. We had no luck with the place I found online. Again, Google hours were not the same as real hours.
We stumbled upon Round Stones Artisan and I had the best lunch of my life! Highly recommend for all! I got a kimchi sandwich that was on the freshest foccacia and the salt on top was perfectly flakey. Accompanied by a very fresh salad and a lovely mug of tea. Ireland knows how to do pottery! Claire said "yum yum yum" beside me in between most bites :) She got a sampling of two salads and soup and found everything fresh, tasty, unique and perfectly seasoned.
After lunch, we continued 30 minutes north to the Wicklow Mountains and to a great viewing spot called Sally Gap (thanks Ta for the recommendation). This was one of the highlights of the day for me. The weather was dry, thankfully, but there were clouds. Still the scenery, mountain range and surrounding areas were so beautiful. We stopped a few times, walked to the edge of the cliff and just basked. We saw people in vans that were camping and some others with hanggliders. I really would love to do that sometime! Camp there and spend a few days hiking, biking and flying with a small wing suit keeping you safe...
We then continued about 90 minutes north out of Wicklow, through Dublin, and to Meath to my cousin Vinny's house. Vinny is my first cousin. His mom is Jackie, who is my dad's sister. Vinny was very nice to host all 8 of us! His wife, Eimear is the best and they have very cute boys, JP (almost 4) and Sonny (almost 1). We had a wonderful BBQ dinner and then headed to the infamous Mrs O's. We had great chats, lots of laughs and a walk of the castle ruins.
We then got home to have the ritualistic "chip sandwich:" Tayo's on buttered bread. Night night!