Ireland!

Hi everyone! Updating the blog has been hard lately because Katie and I have been in the middle of the wet wet wilds of Ireland. I wish I could post some pictures with this, but this computer isn't cooperating.

Katie and I are in Germany now. We flew into Düsseldorf from Tralee this morning. Ireland was lovely but really really wet. We were in Dublin two nights and visited the Guinness Storehouse where the beer got its start. After Dublin we hiked 137km down the Wicklow Way. We had a lot of adventures camping by iron bridges, in sheep fields, and once in a ditch in a crowded pine forest. The first 50km or so had a lot of people so there were grocery stores and water pumps, but for the second half we had to carry all our food through and filter river water to drink. I think I had more fun than Katie, although we both enjoyed the adventure. We saw the ruined monastic city of Glendalough, gigantic waterfalls, peat bogs, and glacial valleys. One one relatively clear day we visited Powerscourt House and Gardens, which Katie said was her favorite part of the vacation so far. The whole trip took us six days of lazy walking.

Ireland is wet wet wet! It rained at least once a day the whole time we were there, and there were two days we just stayed in the tent because it wasn't worth going outside.

After the Wicklow Way we went to Waterford and visited the Waterford Crystal Showroom. You can tour the factory for a few Euro, and we were the only people on the tour so we got to talk to the master craftsmen while the cut crystal and blew molten glass into molds. Justin Timberlake had commissioned a crystal trophy and Katie got to hold a finished piece of it.

We spent our last day in Ireland in Killarney enjoying live Irish music with Guinness. Hope to post pictures soon!