Glendalough, Co. Wicklow; Kilkenny, Co. Kilkenny, Ireland

The program through which I am here is EUSA. Today someone came up the nick name "EU-Suck". Yes, immature, but kind of captured our sentiments at the time.

So, we set out at 9:30, in a Paddywagon tour bus. It took us just over an hour to get to Glendalough National Park (real name has another word in there, like "Miner's" or something.) We had two hours to explore. Here are some nifty facts:

-The 'park' (which is what we'll call it for this blog) is the 7th most holy place in the world.
-Why? St. Kevin made the park his home. I don't remember his claim to fame, but he was really big with the animals (supposedly birds would come to him just to lay their eggs in his hand), he lived in a tree (before Butterfly!), and lived to be 120 years old. Do you think his hair was grey or did he not have any left?

Anyway, all that's really left is a beautiful cemetery with a great sampling of Celtic crosses (like fingerprints, not one is the same.) There's a tower still intact, a 'house' of some sort, and then ruins of a wall, or another building. You'll see in the pictures. So, after seeing all that nifty stuff, we went into the park itself. Beautiful views of lakes and trees. So green, so blue, just beyond gorgeous.

Unfortunately, we did not have time to get to the remnants of the miner's village. Back on the bus, and it's just over 2 hours to Kilkenny. We have very gross sandwiches, a little fruit, not very good tea, and then go to take a tour of Kilkenny Castle.

Or so we thought. Our "tour" was self guided with a little piece of paper to help. And Castle? Not by my book. It was bought in the mid 90's by Ireland for fifty pounds (the family who owned it just needed to give it up, but they auctioned off EVERYTHING inside.) Anyway, Ireland state went about "restoring" it and making it accessible to the public. Now, my tone may sound a bit bitter, and it is, but trust me when I tell you that very, very little about it was "castle". From the outside it looked like an appropriate term. But, not inside. Another thing: NO photography. Now, I might understand if it was really old and they were worried people would use flash even if asked not to, and flash can damage stuff-- BUT, nothing inside was new. On the conrary, it was all very new. I mean, it was replications of 1800's things, when the castle itself dates back to early 1200's. The wallpaper was fake, EVERYTHING was practically fake, except for a few pieces here and there-- mainly the fireplaces, and a toilet (which looked like it would have been very ineffective to use...) The rooms were poorly marked, so there was lots of guessing of location and all that. I'd guess at least half of the castle was not for view.

Very disappointing. But, when we got back on the bus-- feeling as if the day mostly a fail-- our bus driver was very nice and said we could ask him anything. So, for three hours he answered any question we could pull out of our... heads... anyway-- he was awesome. Not only do I love hearing things from a local's perspective, speckled with a bit of their own personal history, but I learned so, so much. For sure, I learned more in those three hours on that bus than I will and have so far in our class every week (which most of us want to protest, especially seeing as how it's not part of our grade.)

I'm doing laundry. (In my sink, heck yes. I'm not paying 3 euro to wash and 3 euro to dry. Ghetto chic!)

Will get to the pictures tonight or tomorrow morning... I know I've fallen quite behind with that. (Not sure if people actually keep up with this, but I try to get it all "down" before I forget, so pictures come second to the actual entries.)

Hope you all had a great weekend! At least the weather was absolutely fabulous here, and I got a rain coat from Penney's for only 7 euro (score).