DoinDublin: wicklow

My eyes are still a little wet as I sit here and type this entry. We are really leaving and it is starting to actually feel like it. We are checked in at Bewley's Hotel ...basically across the road from the place we called home for the past year. Number 5.
We spent the past two frantic days packing. We had movers come today to fill a one hundred cubic foot crate today. We packed up our six massive suitcases and three normal sized and checked out. Tomorrow the place gets cleaned and officially Friday it will no longer be a place we can call home. Walking through and seeing the empty rooms and one room full of luggage was so sad and walking out the door knowing we won't sleep there again is what brought the tears...but packing up reminded me of all of the adventures we had this year. What an incredible year!
Which brings me to this post...the rest of summer. Once we got word that we were going to be moving on out we re-evaluated our list of things we wanted to do, see and eat in this country and realized we had some boxes to check. Kevin hadn't been to the mountains. They are in Dublin's back yard, but when Max and I went with my family and our bus driver Tim, poor Kevin was working. We also had a coast of Ireland that we hadn't touched. The north. It hit us that we had two weekends before moving weekend and we had places to go and things to see. I called the Enterprise on a Friday and booked a car for that day. Of course, that late in the game I was forced out of my comfort zone of the automatic and was only left with manuals to choose from. Driving a stick just like the rest of the country. A HUGE thank you to Bunny for teaching me to drive her stick shift all those years ago...and to Dano for a brief refresher course in college...and Tim for showing giving me a recent example of excellence. I rocked that VW Golf all through the Wicklow mountains, Dublin, and our driveway. Our gate to our driveway is intimidating, it doesn't look as wide as it actually is and it feels like a mirror or two will be lost each time I drive through, and the peel out marks prove it! In fairness (and it's a good thing I type this and not Kevin), for each peel out there were two smooth starts and for each red light kill, two successful goes. I really wasn't that bad...and as time went on I found my groove and my confidence and the trip was a success. The weather was brilliant and the journey was gorgeous...and we purchased the wool blanket I have been coveting since I spotted it in October.

When you gotta go you gotta go.

Approaching the 'Pint of Guinness Lake.' In my previous trip through the mountains we were up top looking down on this lake. It looked just like an extra large pint of Guinness...dark water and a creamy head (the sand).