(Dublin – Wicklow Mountains)
(Originally published at http://www.troysgonewalkabout.com)
Apparently there had been some commotion at 3:30am when some intoxicated guests had tried to get in to the B&B without their keys. How I missed hearing our hostess’ heavy grinding machinery voice as an argument ensued is proof of just how deeply I sleep. But while waiting for Jim to cook us our breakfast, she gave us a play-by-play rundown of the incident as well as the subsequent fallout to the ‘good house’ she’s proud of running, and then overheard the drama again as she got on the phone to one of her nearby B&B mates. It was all good banter, and it certainly gave us something to chuckle about.
As well as that famed ability for the Irish to gas-bag it was noticeable how another cultural trait of theirs is more prevalent than perhaps elsewhere, and that’s heading off to church on Sunday morning. We followed suit, though in a slightly different way than the stereotypical Irish one. Firstly, we headed not to a Catholic church but to a Presbyterian one in Howth, in the area of Dublin’s north where we had taken a not quite on purpose detour through on our arrival two weeks earlier. Secondly, the man doing the sermon that morning was called Rob, and by his accent and his delivery it was pretty clear he was not Irish. But it was great to quickly catch up with him and his wife Di right before their time living in Dublin ended and they returned home to Sydney and to my former church there.
We filled the rest of the day by taking a more conventional path back to the Wicklow Mountains and I successfully found the old monastery of Glendalough without lighting the fuse of further sibling tensions. But the rain was teeming down and it became more of a mad dash rather than a meander around the reconstructed round tower, stone house and remains of the ancient gatehouse and cathedral.
The theme of being re-acquainted over the course of the day continued as we entered our last evening in the country by meeting up and having dinner with Angela from my Scandi-Russia trip the summer before, and Nanna and Amber got re-acquainted with their Irish Coffees for the last time.
