First Day: Kilkenny!!!

Heather and I took what wasn't a terribly long plane from IAD to Dublin, and I slept almost the entire way. When I couldn't sleep, the Kindle and its mp3 function kept me pretty well entertained.

When we landed, we were through immigration and customs in just a few minutes, and everyone in line was quite nice, so it made it go even faster! But did you know that in Ireland the moving sidewalks in airports are also the opposite of what they are here? So I assumed that you pass on the right when people stand on the left...But apparently I was wrong in this assumption- I ran smack into a male flight attendant! I felt awful but he just laughed at me.

But ohh man driving on the wrong side of the road and the wrong side of the car? Is so hard. Haha, Heather was having quite the time on the "beltway" of Dublin- but all turned out to be well, as she is quite adept at driving anyway. But you do, in fact, pass on the right on the roadways here, not the left. Here is our car:

And that's Heather getting her rain jacket ready for the Gardens of Powerscourt.

The Gardens were GORGEOUS. There were so many different types of flowers that we had never seen or heard of before...and we're going to show all of the pictures to our mom so she can tell us what-all they were. Here is a really incredible tower (54 steps to the top!)After the Gardens, we went driving from Enniskerry (the small town where the gardens are, about 20 minutes south of Dublin) all the way to Glendalough, and basically the entire time is just gorgeous picture after gorgeous picture. Here are just a couple of the incredible views we saw today (and we had incredible weather, which was so lucky!!) Here is a sampling of what we saw:

This waterfall came literally out of nowhere. Heather looked in the rear-view mirror and this 100 foot waterfall was just there! It was incredible, and we spent the rest of the drive checking the rearview mirror for other goodies- and they did not disappoint!

Then, on to Kilkenny, where we checked into our room, took naps, and got ready for a night on the town. We went to a Chinese restaurant, and Chinese food in Ireland is SO different than it is in the States, but it was so good. We didn't take a picture of it, though- I'll have to do that tomorrow! Then we went to a legit Irish pub called Matt the Miller's and Heather and I both got Bailey's Irish Cremes...they were delish. We were going to get Guinness, but we decided to hold off on that until the Guinness Storehaus near the end of our trip.

And now we are going to sleep because we have a fun-filled day planned for tomorrow! Catch ya'll later!

-Kat