Garden Tour of Ireland and England: Little Catch Up

Sorry I didn't get to post yesterday... we stayed at a Bed and Breakfast last night and the internet went out before I got to blog. I will get the days news up when I have a little more free time but in the mean time here is what happened today!

Day 6 - A quick run down of the day... We got an good start to the day with a very nice homemade breakfast! Once we finished and our group loaded the bus we headed to the other B&B down the way to pick up the rest of the group. They had just as nice a time as we did with the exception of one little incident... The story goes as follows(it was told by the woman who runs the B&B at dinner). Apparently, long ago there was a father and his two sons who lived in the house and one day the sons killed their father and buried him in the back yard so they could be free to go to America. Well, I guess the father didn't like that much because he is now said to haunt certain areas of the house. Now the woman, I believe her name was Ilene, hinted that this ghost haunts one of the rooms the boys were staying in. So last night Payton had gotten a room to herself and was working on her journal and listening to music when she heard this thunk, thunk, thunk. So at first she said she thought it was the boys in he next room, but she could hear David snoring so that ruled that out. So a little freaked out she went back to righting in her journal when she heard thunk, thunk, thunk again but this time it was closer and sounded like it was coming towards the bed. At that point she grabbed her stuff and rushed downstairs where some of the other girls were staying and climbed into bed with Beth explaining the ghost was in her room! It sounded like quite the experience(I am glad it wasn't me)!

Once with the story of Payton's adventure we were on our way! First stop was St. Kevin's monastery in Glendalough. It is nestled in a valley near 2 lakes. St. Kevin was originally living here in solitude but slowly people began arriving and it grew into a monastic town. Interestingly, the town was attacked several times by the Vikings but never sustained any major damage. All the buildings within the sacred circle of the monastery were built of stone and most still remained, minus the roof as they we made of wood and have since been destroyed or collapsed. We didn't have much time here because we were in a bit of a hurry to get moving to the next place but it was definitely an interesting place to visit and much different than the rest of the gardens we have seen.

St. Kevin's 6th century monastery at Glendalough.

The next place on the agenda was the Powerscourt House and Garden. This was actually the garden I researched and did my write up on so I was pretty excited to get to see it! The castle was built in 13th century and the gardened have been continuously added to. I think I was most excited to see this place b/c it was featured in The Count of Monte Cristo, which is one of my favorite movies! The house and gardens definitely did not disappoint when we finally got there! everything was at such a grand scale but it didn't feel overwhelming. The different areas of the garden were well spaced and even the stairs from where the road use to come in all the way up to the house were not over bearing or even intimidating!

The Powerscourt House and Gardens.

The last stop of the day was a house and garden known as Killruddery. It to was a castle and estate, but on a much smaller scale compared to the Powerscourt. The neat thing about Killruddery is that it is still being lived in by the same family who first built the castle and over the generations its under gone several expansions and even a reduction! the gardens here were simple, mainly grassy areas with trees and bushes. There were a few more formal garden areas, but majority of the garden was simple grass. The simplicity of it was rather nice, and made strolling around enjoyable!

Killruddery

So for the remainder of our time on Ireland we will be staying in Dublin! It is the largest and busiest city we have been to by far! It has a different kind of historic charm compared to many of the other cities and towns. Rather than the small town stores that many of the towns/cities we have stayed in, Dublin has the feel of a city that has always been heavily populated and has thus had the money to build larger and more monumental buildings. The nightlife scene here is also much greater, for as you can guess the pubs were the on the agenda once again!