Sunday, September 26, 2010

Irish Rover

From Sept 14th to Sept 22nd I was in Ireland for a week of meetings and team building.  This was my second trip to Ireland, I will not bore you with all the details, however those who are interested in my comings and goings may find the following observations and notes interesting:


  • I felt like I got to know Dublin better this trip.  The first trip was my first time visiting European countries so I had a bit of a deer in the headlights view of things.  Now that I am more experienced with life across the Atlantic I was able to immediately feel comfortable and take in more of the sights, sounds and culture of Dublin.
  • Our two local Irish team members helped with this as they were able to give us a local perspective on what to see, how to act, and historical information that I would not have picked up on.  Local tour guides++.
  • I finally got a chance to do some geocaching in Ireland.  Despite being jetlagged after an overnight flight, I found my first cache 3 hours after landing in Ireland, and found a total of 7, including my first webcam cache, and completing two multi caches (one was a six stage multi), both of which required two trips around the city to complete.
  • On the weekend we all took a trip down the southern coast of Ireland to a place called Wicklow, and did some hiking in Glendalough (pronounced Glen-da-lock).  We accidentally  took the scenic route from Dublin to Glendalough, which provided us with some amazing views of the rugged Irish countryside (and some hairy encounters with local traffic, both human and livestock based).  It took us a bit longer to get to our destination, but the experience was well worth it.
  • Hiking through the irish countryside is amazing.  I highly recommend it.  We only did a short 3 mile section of the trails around Glendalough, but if we had more time I'd recommend doing the entire trail.  It is on my todo list when I go back (no plans for that at present tho).  
  • Even if you don't hike, getting out of Dublin is recommended for the beautiful country side and a slower pace.

The following are some pictures.  They are a bit random as to location as I look pictures of the same areas from different perspectives while out and about in Dublin.  I hope you enjoy them.


If you are interested in pics from my first trip to Ireland, check out my picture gallery from 2008.