Dublin, Ireland Vacation – Day 7

It’s the final day of our vacation, and probably one of my favorite days on the trip. We booked a day tour through Bus Éireann and went to Powerscourt Gardens, Glendalough and Wicklow Mountains. If you get the chance to see any of this stuff, be sure to pick a nice day for it. We lucked out this day and got some beautiful, sunny weather before all the rain came later on.

Kristen and I woke up a little early and walked up Pearse Street to the bus station. We saw the Famine Memorial which was neat to see, and then it was time to get to the bus. Our tour guide/driver was hilarious, and had a dry sense of humor. Some of the things he said made me laugh out loud a few times. Talking about if he ever wins the lotto, he’s going to drive the bus into the gates of Powerscourt Gardens and get it stuck. And then he’d flee and run to the airport where he would call his bosses and tell them he quits. I wonder if he thought of that off the cuff or is that his comedy routine he does ever tour? Anyway, we drove through Dun Laoghaire which was nice. Sadly, I picked the wrong side of the bus this time and didn’t get as many good photos from the bus as I did for the Cliffs of Moher/Burren tour. I’ve noticed everything was more scenic on the left side of the bus.

We arrived at Powerscourt Gardens, which is an old estate that has beautiful gardens and a mansion. But inside the mansion isn’t really the mansion, it’s just filled with stores and little shops. The real mansion got burnt down in the 70s I believe? But the gardens were really nice, and definitely worth the trip. We had about an hour and half to walk around, and take pictures. The whole time I had Mozart playing in my head. Some movies like Count of Monte Cristo and Barry Lyndon were filmed there. Kristen and I tried to do as much as could in the time period. We managed to see everything within that time, but probably would have went slower if we went on our own. There’s some weird pet cemetery there that has ponies, dogs, cats, any type of animal that lived there. There was a Japanese garden, Italian garden, a few ponds, and a tower that you can go up in. While waiting for the bus to show up, we stock up on some Honey Wafers; those things are addicting!

Next stop on the tour was Glendalough, but first we drove through the beautiful countryside. We even passed by Daniel-Day Lewis’ home or little village. A lot of celebs live outside of Dublin, and a lot of them have mansions or even castles up in the mountains. Enya and Bono are a few that have huge estates outside of Dublin. We finally arrived at Glendalough and had to watch some movie on it before walking around. We had the option of going on a tour through the old monastic site or walk around ourselves. We’ve both had a enough of tours so we went & walked it ourselves.

There were so many people at Glendalough, it was hard not getting people in your shots. This place is a National Park after all, which means locals come here to enjoy walking their dogs or having picnics with the kids. There are 2 lakes to walk to, but you have to hurry to see both of them as it’s about a 15 minute to each one. I was getting annoyed at this part of the trip because it was getting windy and it kept blowing crap into my camera. So every 2 seconds I had to clean out my camera and lenses. Surely there has to be an easier way of stopping dust and other crap from getting into your camera? As we were walking back from the Upper Lake, I noticed the rain clouds coming and thankfully we got on the bus when we did. It was really rainy when driving through the Wicklow Mountains. Thankfully the rain stopped when our Bus made a quick stop in the mountains. But overall, I had a blast on this trip and glad we ended up doing it. I highly recommend seeing Powerscourt Gardens, Glendalough and the Wicklow Mountains.

That’s it for my Ireland Vacation photos! I hope you’ve enjoyed them and be sure to comment and let me know what you thought of them. I had a great time in Ireland and hope to return one day. Although I liked Dublin, I think I want to travel around the country and see more of the countryside instead. The west coast of Ireland is just simply beautiful. If any of you are traveling to Ireland, let me know if you have any questions. Thanks for reading!

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Tags: Cathedral, County Wicklow, Dublin, Eire, Gleann Dá Loch, glendalough, Ireland, lower lake, powerscourt gardens, round tower, st kevin, upper lake, wicklow mountains