Castles and Abbeys and Waterfalls, Oh My!

Our third day in Ireland is the first one where I tried to bite off more than I could chew.

We'd traveled south and spent the night in Wicklow the night before, but our first two destinations were north and west of where we were staying. It wasn't a far drive, though- about half an hour to each place- so it seemed to make sense. We first went to Glendalough Monastic Site (5 euros). Slide through the pictures to the right to see all the gorgeous scenery and architecture! The buildings here date from the 10th-12th century (it was overrun by Normans in the 1200s, so a lot of the buildings are in ruins). It's also nestled in the gorgeous Wicklow Mountains. We spent an hour in the monastic city, walking through half-destroyed stone buildings and graveyards, even spotting some old family names on the headstones. Walking through a grand stone archway, we came to the edge of the little village of Glendalough, where a woman sat playing the Uilleann Pipes. The Uilleann Pipes is the national bagpipe of Ireland, but this was the only time I got to see them played the whole time we were there, and it was fascinating. I listened to her

play for a good 5 minutes or so, and she was probably really disgruntled when I walked away without tipping her... (I didn't have any money on me! I felt a little like Monica tipping the paper boy with cookies at Christmas. Although instead of cookies, it was with a smile... which is probably even worse.)

I wish I had planned on spending the entire morning exploring the monastic site and hiking around the Wicklow Mountains, but I had planned 4 more things that day (when I really shouldn't have). The next thing on our list was traveling back north to Powerscourt Waterfall (6 euros). It's the tallest waterfall in Ireland, and I thought we would relax by the waterfall, eat a small lunch, maybe read a little bit. It was too chilly to be in the water, there were tons of people there (we're sort of recluses and would have preferred getting to explore on our own), and once we took our pictures we were kind of like, "Now what?" We realized when it was almost time for us to leave that there was a lot of space to hike around and explore, though. It was really pretty, but I probably would have been satisfied with not seeing the waterfall and just staying at the gorgeous Wicklow Mountains all morning.

Next we headed back south an hour to tour Ferns Castle (0 euros!). I wasn't aware before we went that you can't actually go inside the castle without a tour guide. You can go into the center courtyard inside the ruined walls of the castle, but the entrance to the tower is locked. This is for safety reasons- there were some spots where the ceiling was very low and dangerous (apparently everyone was as tall as Napoleon in those days). I enjoyed the tour, but it was a lot of information- we sat and listened to the background of the castle for about 15 minutes at the visitor center before we even went into the courtyard, which was a lot to pay attention to after a long day of exploring, touring, and driving. Getting to go inside the castle's only in-tact tower was worth the wait. We loved the architecture, and we got to go up three or four levels.

Kells Priory (0 euros!) was our next stop, and it was one of my favorite places of all to visit. Kells Priory is where the Book of Kells, the illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels (on display at Trinity College's library), was written and illustrated. We arrived and were a little uncertain of where to go (they didn't have a visitor's center), then found out that they have an online audio guide. This was great for our schedule to be able to do a self-guided tour, although if we hadn't already paid the $10 international cell phone fee that day we wouldn't have been so keen. I think there was internet access at the priory but the connection was so poor that we didn't use it. So we hiked up our pants and started our trek through the sheep fields outside the abbey, scaring the herd of nervous, clumsy sheep off to greener (less populated) pastures.

Once inside the walls of the priory, there's a network of ruined stone buildings that were being worked on at the time. (There were signs warning us to keep out of the construction site, but those are like yellow road signs- just suggestions, right?) We hopped over the ruined stone walls and explored the place. At the back edge of the ruins is a walking trail with a little bridge that leads over a creek. We followed the walking trail to the village and all the way back around to our car. We decided we might retire here someday.

Our last stop was the town of Enniscorthy.

I had seen on Pinterest some pictures of

Enniscorthy Castle and thought it'd be another pretty one to see. I'm not sure how recent that information was, but when we got there, it was locked up and had been turned into an elementary school. It looks like they sometimes have a murder mystery dinner theater there, but I couldn't find any booking information about it online (now I think it's something they do every Halloween).

We were a bit disappointed and should have taken this off our list for the day. We ate dinner at a random sit-down restaurant and drove another 45 minutes to where we were staying for the night, finding a warm house with the most comfortable bed I had slept in since I'd arrived. I think I slept a full 11 hours.

Total costs for Day 3: ~40 euros per person

Cost of airbnb: $70