We woke up and ate our last delicious full Irish breakfast. At the time we didn't know it was our last full Irish breakfast, but that's another story.
We got everything loaded into the Ka and decided to take a morning walk over to St. Fin Barre's Cathedral. It was a mile or less from our B&B and was supposed to be quite impressive. It delivered on the exterior for sure. The interior was slightly disappointing, but only because of the large amount of restoration work in progress. Of course, restoration work is a wonderful thing and I'm sure that it will look amazing when they have finished, but couldn't they have consulted my schedule to know that we would be visiting and thus, delay their work? I mean really :-)
The site of St. Fin Barre's has been a site of Christian worship since the 7th century, and there are small bits here and there that speak to the longevity of the grounds. The churchyard had some older areas and remnants of foundations of previous buildings. The inside of the church was beautiful (despite the construction) and had some interesting floor mosaics and great stained glass windows. Once we got outside and walked around it to the other side, I thought it looked a bit like Cinderella's castle at Disney World. Neat.
We walked back to the B&B to get into the Ka and get on our way. Our ultimate destination for the evening was our B&B in Dublin, but we wanted to visit Waterford and Glendalough (pronounced Glen-da-lock) on the way. We drove through some lovely scenery and passed Ardmore, prompting us to look around for the Arbuckle Mountains and the sign for Two Frogs, and we made our way into Waterford, which bills itself as the oldest town in Ireland. We found a place to park and walked up to the Waterford Crystal factory. Outside the building was an interpretive sign about the Viking origins of the city. We arrived just in time to not have to wait for a tour, which was awesome. We followed Caroline, our guide, through the inner workings of the crystal making and shaping, including glassblowing and carving. We saw the molds for lots of different intricate designs, including a large bear head that went with a full crystal bear and something labeled J. Timberlake. We did not, however, get to see the lifesized crystal Justin Timberlake.* There were little quiz panels on the wall to appeal to children with a seahorse motif, as the seahorse is the symbol of Waterford Crystal. Well, a seahorse with an inverted tail shaped to form a four-leaf clover. One of them referenced something called a "glory hole," which for the life of me I can't remember what it meant in this context because I couldn't stop laughing about its less-than-appropriate meaning.
As we moved down the production process, we got to see how the items were carved by hand or by machine (for the more standard pieces). We saw beautiful crystal carriages with horses, a covered wagon with horses (and Alec was wearing his OU shirt!), and the crystal triangles they put together to make the Millenium Ball for Times Square, among other things. Like a crystal football headed to Alabama.
We finished our tour and perused the selections in the large, open shop. Of course, I found many things I would have loved to have had, but only a few that I was willing to spend the money on. We picked up a seahorse Christmas ornament to add to our travel ornament collection and were very satisfied. Back to the Ka and on to Glendalough!
Well, that was the plan anyway. We got on the road and were going great guns toward the Wicklow Mountains, seeing some beautiful scenery (a different beautiful from the western coast), and then it happened. Alec had the directions on his phone from our last use of wifi that morning. Everything was going just great until I accidentally hit the wrong button, or hit the right button too many times, or some other such something. Regardless, I lost the directions. Moral of the story: always take screen shots. So, we tried to follow signs for a bit, but they were less than helpful, so we finally had to pull into a pub that was kind of by itself at a bit of a crossroads. Alec went in to ask for directions. After listening to the owner and a patron discuss the best way to send us and distilling their combined directions into one route, Alec came back to the car and we set on our way again. It took us a couple of turns before we were actually convinced that we were on the right track, but eventually we started seeing signs for Glendalough again and knew we were going to make it.
We spent some time driving through the mountains before we got to Glendalough. Glendalough is a monastic settlement established by St. Kevin in the 7th century. And it is in a beautiful setting. St. Laurence O'Toole, who was the patron of Dublin and who will be discussed again when we're in Dublin, used to visit Glendalough to get away from the temptations of town. The settlement includes a tall round tower with a door 12 feet off the ground to protect the monks, a couple of churches, a churchyard, and more buildings that we didn't get to see because of our time constraints. There are walking trails throughout the area into the mountains. So beautiful and peaceful. We didn't make it in time to go into the visitor's center, but we got to wander around the grounds, examining the ruins and soaking in the history for quite a while. Alec was even fascinated by the drainage grates in the parking lot. I'm pretty sure that's an engineer thing :-)
We left Glendalough to find our B&B in Dublin. Well, in Drumcondra, which is just outside of Dublin proper--a very short busride away. We arrived and had to park across the street, which was a major thoroughfare and way fun to cross. I almost remembered which direction I was supposed to watch for oncoming traffic! This hotel (as it shall be called from now on) was our least favorite in Ireland. Billed as a B&B, it was an extra 5 Euro for a continental breakfast. And at this point in our trip we were spoiled on our full Irish breakfasts. So, we decided that instead of settling for a continental breakfast, we would pick up some breakfast food on our way to the bus stop into Dublin the next day. It's fun to grocery shop in a foreign country--we highly recommend it!
Anyway, that night we walked down the street to Fagan's Pub, which was established the same year that Oklahoma obtained statehood, 1907. That made me smile. We had a leisurely dinner before taking a short walk and heading back to the hotel. It was 10:15 and not completely dark yet. Love those northern latitudes!
Up Next: How much of Dublin can you see in a day? Will they ever find the statue of Molly Malone? Tune in for the answers!
*I cannot confirm the existence of a lifesized crystal Justin Timberlake. But it makes me giggle to think it exists.
For further information on St. Fin Barre's Cathedral, check out http://www.cathedral.cork.anglican.org/index.php/history1/
For more on Waterford Crystal, visit http://www.waterfordvisitorcentre.com/
To learn more about Glendalough, see http://www.sacred-destinations.com/ireland/glendalough
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