The Guinness Lake, the PS I Love You Bridge + a 6th Century Monastery.

Today we decided to be ‘real’ tourists, in the sense that we booked on a tour bus. Not normally our cup of tea, we wanted to see a bit of the Irish countryside and with the prices of everything in Europe, a coach trip was way cheaper than renting a car. So we got up bright and early and jumped on a Wild Wicklow tour bus, taking us through to Glendalough region to see some ‘hidden mountains and barren boglands’.

We started driving through Dublin, our guide pointing out James Joyce historic landmarks all over the place. We head down to the coast, and stopped for a while along the cold waterfront.

We stopped off at the beautiful Avoca Handweavers store, tucked away in a green, lush garden, and had raspberry cheesecake brownies and pear and vanilla scones.

Onwards then out to the wilderness – we stopped off above the Guinness lake that provides all the water to the brewery. So, you’ve pretty much all drunk from this lake.

Next up was a stop looking over the plains at all the peat – Eric, of course only thinking about whiskey, stared out and said ‘I shall drink you one day…’

We head on over the bridge from the movie P.S I Love You where Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler meet. We drove over the plains from the battle scenes in Braveheart.

We drove through the Irish ‘Hollywood’, taking a peek into Enya’s castle, Bono’s estate, Daniel Day Lewis’s modest house, and through Van Morrisons gates:

Then we head over to Glendalough lake, then over to a 6^th Century Monastic Settlement.

Finishing the day with a toast of Jameson Whiskey, we head back to Dublin and finished the day back at Ireland’s oldest pub, the Brazen Head with warm bowls of Beef and Guinness stew.