Emily and I had the great pleasure of going on a guided tour of Glendalough and the Wicklow Mountains. It was amazing. Our guide, John Bolton (hilarious Irishman), was our guide. We weaved our way through the Dublin traffic (and yes there is some!) to outer Dublin where we went to visit the Powerscourt House. It is basically a Historical manor that used to be owned by the Slazenger family - a modest place with almost 43 bedrooms and about 15 gardens. Nothing too big. Anyway, they used to live there and the story goes that the day before they were opening it to the public they held a big ball to celebrate. Unfortunately that night the central part of the house caught fire and the interior was damaged badly. So they postponed the opening, fixed up the house and gave the property to the council with the condition that any money made by the house gets spent on the house and that no-one from there family ever made any money from it. Kind of a noble act really. So we visited this place and it is beautiful. Anyone who comes here should definately make a stop off at this place. Set high in the hills you actually feel healthier after breathing the air and the views are nothing like Australia....they are GREEN! From there we ventured to the main attraction, Glendalough which is an old site of a monastery in the Wicklow National Park. The name itself translates into the ''Valley of Two Lakes'' which as the name suggest contains two lakes. It was here that St. Kevin (the Saint that liked his solitude) founded the monastery in the 6th Century. It was deemed the education centre of Europe and contains a really tall round tower that acted like a beacon to passers. After a tour through there we went in search of the Second lake and made friends with a German Tourist who wanted to practice her English. The whole day was fantastic and had me looking forward to the following morning as we were going to go back in time again to see Newgrange - a tomb older than the Pyramids!