The next morning we were up bright and early for our Wild Wicklow Tour!

The Wicklow Mountains, as I'm sure you are aware, are the wild rolling mountains just south of Dublin.  They are what you think of, honestly, when you think of Ireland.  They are the hills where so many of the scenes of Braveheart were filmed.  Oh, were you not aware that Braveheart was largely filmed in Ireland? Don't you fret, little friend, someone will mention it to you at least every other sentence if you are anywhere near where actual filming occurred.  

The tour was on a large tour bus (which, being Irish, they all referred to as a "coach").  It was quite comfy, and I didn't feel cramped at all, which is important, because being cramped while on vacation is just stupid.  We first stopped off at the docks of Dublin, and I ran out onto the rocks, and K took a picture of me out there, holding my sketchbook as always:

We all boarded the coach again, and then--

"HANG ON A TICK!" I hear you shouting.  "Why is every picture you're posting a picture of YOU? Where are all the pictures you took of Kris??"

Well, the fact is, I took a LOT of pictures, and, indeed, a lot of pictures of Kris, as she is stunningly beautiful.  However, my phone took it upon itself to purge quite a lot of the pictures I took, so my photos won't show up until we get to the Ring of Kerry, which is still some days away. Until then, you're stuck with pictures of me, so suck it up, soldier.

Right, so up we went to into the hills.  First, though, we passed Bono's house.  It had a great huge gate inscribed with lyrics from U2 songs.  We couldn't see inside, as he had also built great huge walls.

Our tour guide was very nice, and very knowledgeable about the area, which is what you want in a tour guide, honestly.  The roads in Ireland, by the way, are usually one lane in each direction, and roughly 1.5 cars wide in total.  When passing a car going the other way, then, both drivers will slam their car to the left (they drive on the wrong side) so that no one is brutally killed in a high-speed head-on collision. Helpfully, just next to the roads throughout Ireland there are large stone walls or thick, heavy trees, so one is constantly scraping up the side of one's rental car. In this case, the coach was getting all scraped up, so I cared a lot less, but it was nonetheless unnerving being on roads that tiny in something that big.

Eventually, though, we were actually up in the Wicklow mountains proper.  

It was unbelievable.  You could step to the edge of the thick heather covering the ground, and look out over rolling hills and mountains stretching for as far as the eye could see.

Truly, some of the most beautiful country I have ever beheld personally.  It was an amazing day.

Oh, hey, look, there's a picture of us!

After lunch, we went up to Glendelough (pronounced GLENdylock), which is not only beautiful, but also is the site of an ancient town center, filled with buildings made of both mortared and unmortared stone.  Pretty amazing stuff.

To cap off our long trek, we each enjoyed a shot of Scotch, which was the best, smoothest, most...

...no, it tasted the way gasoline smells, as all Scotch does.  I just don't get it, I guess.  I'm okay with that, though!

We retired to our hotel, and enjoyed a low-key dinner, tea, and slept like dead things.  It was a really long day, but tremendously beautiful throughout.

This is a good vacation.

Tomorrow, ADVENTURE!!  :)

Friday was spent seeing the museums and beautiful architecture of Dublin. We were both a little tired, owing to The Troubles... No, wait, that's something else.

Anyway, we really enjoyed seeing the museums, with such a grand rich history.  A lot of the pieces are very local ("this sword was found just over there", "this book was found under that big tree outside", etc etc), and while I've seen that sort of thing back home, it is a bit different when it goes back so many centuries.

My favorite piece was the Tara Brooch, shown here:

It dates back to 700 AD, and is really a phenomenal piece of stabby jewelry.  In the upper right, you can see a gold triangle, and within that triangle is a tiny, tiny Celtic dragon, which is just amazingly detailed. I spent some time grabbing a sketch of it, and K took a picture of me drawing it, which I share with you now, for no better reason than it's a neat picture:

SEE?? Isn't that a neat picture?!

I will say that in Ireland, they have bogs, and apparently sometimes people will inadvertently find their way into those bogs, and they will inadvertently die, and then years later some bog wanderer will find their largely mummified remains, and then some guy will put these remains in a museum, and then you will have the opportunity to look at their dead body in some detail, apparently so that you have the opportunity to remark, "That is a well-preserved dead person!"

...I didn't take pictures of the bog people, and I honestly regretted looking at them.  However, if you're into looking at bodies of people remarkably well preserved in bogs, Ireland has got you covered.  They have a LOT of them.  At least one of the bog bodies had been MURDERED, and then dumped in the bog, and they went into great detail about how, if one looked closely, one could see where the skull had been caved in just here, and one could tell that it had been a furious, violent act of MURDER, and one could surmise that the deceased had probably been a criminal, engaged in some nefarious enterprise, or possibly had simply been walking down a country lane when he had been cruelly MURDERED by nefarious types, or or or maybe some large tree had fallen on his head and MURDERED him, as trees are wont to do.

I didn't dig the bog bodies.

So to speak.

Ahem.

Next, we went to the Trinity College Library, mostly to see the Book of Kells.  This is a book which had been fished out of a bog (a recurring theme with Irish history, I feel), and which was remarkably well preserved.  However, when one goes to actually LOOK at the Book of Kells, one cannot help to be... let's say underwhelmed.  It is, I confess, a LARGE book, but at the end of the day, it's a book, and while it is QUITE bookish, and absolutely excels in its ability to be a book, and may well be without peer as books go, it is still a book you are all crowding around trying to get a good look at while the woman I will politely call "she-who-smells-like-a-whale-oil-refinery" is deeply invading your personal space.  Great, I've seen the book, I gotta go.

It's a really good book, and you should go see it, but mostly because AFTER you see it, you can see the Trinity College Library itself:

Holy. Moly.

This is a BREATHTAKING library.

I have no words.  It's one huge long hall, framed on either side by bookcase after bookcase.  It's really an amazing experience.  I WANT ONE.

We then paused in our excursions to have lunch, as our blood sugar was getting low, and we were still a bit anxious as we hadn't heard anything about my luggage.  I kept ringing the hotel, asking if it had been delivered from the airport yet, and the young man at the desk, every time I called, seemed to understand for the first time that my luggage had been misplaced, and they should expect it to be delivered.  Every. Time.

"You lost your what now?"

"My luggage.  The airline has said that I could expect that it would be delivered today."

"Delivered? Where?"

"To... to you.  What do you mean 'Where?'?? I asked them to deliver it to the hotel."

"What hotel?"

"The one you work at.  The one where we are staying."

"I don't think we have anything like that, here, sir."

"What do you... what?"

"I'm sorry, let's start again.  You lost your what now?"

So that was getting pretty annoying.

In any event, we decided to hit the National Gallery after lunch.  As we stopped in, the woman at the front desk said, "Oh, there's no charge. The collection is...quite *truncated* at the moment, I'm afraid."

There were, I believe a total of ten paintings. In the entire building. "Quite truncated", indeed.  Apparently, most of the national collection was out on loan, leaving them nothing to display.  They did, however, have a talented young artist hard at work in the building at one point:

I got to use crayons and everything!

After a long day, we did finally make it back to the hotel, and in our room we found....

MYLUGGAGEHADARRIVED!!! 

AND they had moved us to a different room, with a much more comfortable bed, AND we ordered a tea service, AND Kris's phone service was finally restored, AND... it was a really, really great day.

This is a good vacation.

Tomorrow, ADVENTURE!! :)

We both managed a few hours of sleep, and arrived Thursday morn at Heathrow, the Most Unpleasant Place in Europe. It cannot be overstated. Blech.

We also discovered that Kris's phone wasn't roaming properly, which was irritating, but we would have to wait to deal with that.

We passed through customs very quickly, and through security very very very slowly, but soon we were on our way and buttoned up in our next flight, which would bring us to the shining shores of Ireland!!

And then British Airways lost my luggage.

Sigh.

On the plus side, we did get our rental car without to much fuss and bother, and it's tiiiiiiiny, which turns out to be a blessing. The locals have a very casual relationship with the lane markings, so being small and nimble is a real advantage! Driving on the left was a little nerve-wracking, but we made it to our hotel without incident. We only nearly died like seven times. Piece of cake.

We checked into our hotel, the Roxford Lodge in Ballsbridge, which is a region of Dublin, near the city center. We had dinner at a nice place called The Chop Shop, stopped into a nearby convenience store for snacks, and finally retired, completely exhausted, into our hotel room...

...which was really uncomfortable. I'll spare you the details, but, tragically, not much sleep was had that first night...

Tomorrow, ADVENTURE!! :)

ADVENTURE. It's what we are all after. Exploring the world around us, trying to understand that which we do not yet comprehend, seeking to make connections with other people on this strange world we all call home. That's the very heart of a adventure.

For all of our best planning, however, things do not always go perfectly. This is not to say that smooth sailing is something to be shunned, but rather that the little things force us just off course add that little bit of salt to our journeys, and make everything just that much sweeter. Okay, I'm mixing the hell out of my metaphors, so let's just get on with it, shall we?

First, we took the car service, driven by Mr. Victor, down to San Francisco international.

Then we checked into our flights, checked our baggage, and adorned to what would prove to be an AMAZING lounge. The British Airways business class lounge featured loads of sandwiches, refreshments, and an unqualified sense of luxury that we both enjoyed tremendously. We actually boarded the flight directly from the lounge!

Then we made our way to the plane. K had splurged with a lot of her points to get us into the business class seats, which were really interesting, and of course delightfully spacious and comfy! We were actually in the top cabin of the plane, with only 18 other souls. It was luxurious and wonderful! K and I each had our own "pod", and we were facing each other, so we could chit chat without disturbing anyone else. It was a wonderful ride, and is the BEST way to fly, hands down.

And that's where we found ourselves, racing across the night sky, as our first day came to a close. We both managed to sleep a bit, which was great, and the next day...

ADVENTURE!! :)