DUBLIN AND THE WICKLOW MOUNTAINS
The Emerald Isle, where do I even begin? The sheer cliffs and roaming sheep, the history and castles everywhere were better than I imagined. We started off our trip with flying into Dublin, many thanks to my wonderful husband for braving it and driving for the first time on the left side of the road in the busy city of Dublin. Definitely a bit of a stressful start to the trip adjusting to the driving, but luckily Eric mastered it right away. Stress is expected when driving in a foreign country, but no doubt we definitely would do it all over again, it's always worth it. We were so glad that we had decided to rent a car and drive the entire island ourselves. If no one feels comfortable with driving there definitely are plenty of tour bus options, but then you are always stuck with a group and stuck on going to certain places. The freedom of exploring that comes along with renting a car is amazing and nothing can beat it! Bottom line, rent a car if you can, and book it as far in advance as you can, it only gets more expensive the longer you wait and then you’ll get stuck with a bigger vehicle then you need or a very teeny tiny car.
Dublin, my first European city, I imagined what it would be like and it certainly did not disappoint. We started off by walking around the city centre, that is the beautiful thing about Europe, everything is so close together that you can walk almost anywhere and see so much! You definitely will surpass your step goal each day, but it does not ever feel like you are walking that far. We grabbed lunch at one of the many cute street side cafes. We ended up at the Guinness Storehouse Brewery. I never thought I liked Guinness until we did this tour that ended with a free pint of their brew, don’t knock it till you try it! The brewery itself was incredible, it was a self-walk tour, so you can read as much or a little as you want, and everything is just simply incredible in there. Definitely worth it to do this walking tour. We finished having a dinner of a Guinness stew meat pie and a pint of Guinness, it definitely did not disappoint. The Irish know how to cook amazing meat pies, and their beef is some of the best I’ve ever had.
We did not actually stay in Dublin that evening, we drove towards the Wicklow Mountains and stayed in the perfect a little Airbnb cabin that had the best farm fresh and organic breakfast for us the next morning. It was the perfect way to wake up on our first morning in Ireland. Our Airbnb host had suggested a hike to us, called the Spink loop, that was in the Wicklow Mountains and it certainly did not disappoint. I wasn’t exactly mentally prepared for a long hike (sorry Eric, nothing worse then hiking with someone who isn't prepared) but that is what it was, but it definitely had views that were worth the hike up. The hike took us about three hours, which really isn’t that long, in my head I just thought it was a short one hour round trip minimal elevation hike, boy was I wrong. But it is totally doable for anyone, I just wasn’t exactly the best prepared, haha, that was my own fault. Park at the Glendalough visitor centre and take the trail towards the Monastic City.
These are the first couple of days of our trip into Ireland. Some of you might wonder why we chose Ireland and Scotland, but when I was at University before I transferred schools I was going to study abroad for a semester in Ireland. My new school did not offer this program, but I always knew that some day I wanted to take a trip around the island of Ireland and see all of its beauty. It just worked out with our timing and jobs to make it a two week trip and we have heard so much about Scotland this last year that we also wanted to explore and check out the island while we were over there anyways. So that is a little bit behind our trip, I will continue to do our Itinerary and do an overall final Itinerary of each Island that way if anyone is wanting to plan a trip you have something to base it off of! Planning an extensive trip definitely takes a lot of time, but I always found it most helpful reading people’s itineraries and making my own based off a couple of different peoples trips! So I hope you find this helpful and at the end I will give an itinerary that will be able to hopefully help someone else out while planning and Ireland trip!
Mara, XOXO
