Left to right-Top to bottom:  1. Glendassan Creek with Round Tower in background   2. Cemetery at Glendalough   3. Round Tower   4. Another view of cemetery   5. More ruins   6.  St. Kevin's Kitchen  7. Upper Lake   8. Valley near Wicklow Mountains   9. Another view of the valley. 

Glendalough

Monday morning, we drove about 30 miles south of Dublin to the Glendalough Monastic Village, an early Christian site founded by St. Kevin in the 6th Century as a center devoted to learning, copying and illuminating manuscripts and caring for the sick.

Located in the heart of the Wicklow mountains, Glendalough is one of the best-preserved early Christian monastic sites in Ireland. The area was most likely a full-fledged village with wooden houses, stables and other buildings with several stone churches.  All that remains today is St. Mary's and St. Kevin's Church, part of the cathedral, a round tower and a few smaller stone chapels and prayer huts.

Surrounding the buildings are numerous stone memorials, Celtic crosses and grave stones -- both ancient and modern. 

St. Kevin was known to be quite an eccentric, originally living as a hermit in a cave, sometimes coming out in the winter to stand stark naked in the lake for hours before hurling himself (again naked) into a bush of nettles. (Apparently he preferred to stand in the Upper Lake because it was colder.)

Just north of Glendalough, further into the Wicklow Mountains, is the location where parts of the movie Braveheart were filmed.

Dublin and Grafton Street.

Returning to Dublin that afternoon, we went to Grafton Street, an area popular with buskers (street musicians).  Not a very responsive crowd that afternoon, although a few people stopped to listen.  Robert Wade played several of his sings and I accompanied him on my guitar.  Also on Grafton Street is a nice wireless cafe (with great espresso) where we would go almost every day to upload digital pictures and check email.

I think we both did more walking in a single day than I've had in the last 5 years.  By nighttime, I was pretty exhausted and ready to turn in by 9pm!  Robert managed to talk me into to hitting the streets to find some music nearby.

We decided to head to Gogartys Pub in the Temple Bar area to see if we could find some good music. We found an amazing Irish band there (can’t remember their name), and stayed to listen for about an hour.   There was a guitarist, uillean pipe player, banjo player and a flute player.  The banjo player was a shredder!  It was amazing to hear the stuff coming out of that banjo.