Ireland: Monday

Oh the first day was quite the adventure!  We flew into the Dublin airport really early in the morning (4:30 maybe?) and got our rental car. We were pretty lucky to get a free GPS built into the car.  It could have been wild without it.  We were also pretty lucky to get there on a holiday (the day after Easter there is considered a holiday), so the roads weren't busy at all.  This was great for getting used to driving on the wrong side of the road.  Kyle was our amazing driver for the trip, and we helped to navigate him and keep him on the left side of the road.  It was a pretty bizarre experience for me to be in the passenger seat and not have a steering wheel in front of me!

My friend Carie's fiancé (Aaron) was living in Dublin at the time, and he kindly volunteered to be our tour guide through Dublin.

He walked us all around the city giving us all the important details and showing us all the sights.  I really liked Dublin.  It was interesting to see really old architecture mixed in with modern buildings.  

There were also some beautiful gardens right in the city.  

And my favorite thing may have been the doors.  I loved the colored doors!  I'd love to have a whole street in my neighborhood where everyone has a different colored door. :)

Trinity College

Temple Bar

St. Patrick's Cathedral 

After a couple hours in Dublin, we headed down toward the Wicklow Mountains to Powerscourt.  Have you ever seen The Count of Monte Cristo?  Powerscourt is the house he buys in it.  They have these amazing gardens that we were able to walk around.  It was raining most of the time we were there, but apparently it does that a lot in Ireland. :)

We were pretty exhausted by this point, but we still wanted to drive the short distance from Powerscourt to Glendalough.  It's an old monastery, and it was beautiful!  It was actually one of my favorite places we went.  I loved the old cemetery (that also actually had more recent tombstones...it makes sense, but it was still weird.)  There was also a church ruin and this tall, skinny tower.  It was beautiful.

Tired faces!

We also went up a short path to a little lake.  We were so tired by this point after not sleeping for a couple days that we saw the lake, said, "That's nice!" and turned around to go back to the car. :)

We then headed to Adare where we were staying (over two hours away).  It's this beautiful manor that they've turned into quite the posh place to stay.  We didn't stay in the actual manor, but we stayed in this great condo down the road on the property.  We each had our own bedrooms and bathrooms.  It was definitely big enough to fit several more people.  It had a laundry room, a couple living/sitting rooms, and a pretty big kitchen.

Since we were so tired that night, we just went to a local grocery store and got a quick, delicious meal consisting of microwave pizza, trifle, cookies, apples and clementines.  Adventurous, right?