Joe Hates Memories

To Wicklow we will go! 
Day 1 of the first weekend adventure!

I met Saturday morning with a little bit of nervousness, a lot of excitement, and no idea what to pack. But that train to Wicklow was leaving Connolly station whether I was on it or not. And so unsure of what the weekend would bring I shoved a few things into my bookbag and Jorie, Joe and I made our way to the station.

The train ride was just about an hour and when we arrived in Wicklow we made our way to Captain Halpin’s Bunkhouse. This was the first hostile experience for all of us, and lets face it you don’t tend to hear stories about how awesome hostiles are, so I think its safe to say we were all pretty nervous.

I wont get into the details of our room yet, but I can tell you that as far as the staff go, we lucked out. The bunkhouse was run by a lovely older couple, Ian and Trish who told us all about their tiny town in the middle of county Wicklow. They also told us they would drive us to the mountains the next day if we were interested. 
We were. And so it was decided, Sunday morning we would head to Wicklow Mountians National Park.

That just left Saturday to explore the town. Wicklow may be small, but it certainly has character.

 After the town came the coastline, which is a view I’m certain will never cease to amaze me.

While exploring the far end of the coastline we stumbled across The Black Castle Ruins. Which may sound odd to “stumble” across ruins, but that’s one of the many things I love about Ireland, there is so much history literally in the locals backyards.

Once again, I couldn’t contain my inner 5 year old and just had to climb everything I saw... As usual, the view from the top was the best.

After the ruins we headed headed back down the coastline to the lighthouse and Joe thought it would be fun to get his picture taken with every boat that was painted along the pier…. This was before he realized how many there were. He tried to back out halfway through, but I wasn’t having it. 
Somewhere in this montage the phrase “Joe hates memories” was born and has been said about 1,000 time since.  

Believe me, there are plenty more where that came from.

After the day of exploring we headed to the pub Leitrim where Ian told us there would be a band playing traditional Irish music. We were intruiged so we made our way there.

Even looking back now I’m still not totally sure what happened. Here is what I do know. We defientely went where Ian told us (we double checked the next day). We walked into a pub where the youngest person sitting at the bar was at least 15 years our senior, and the majority of the others looked as though they may have been a part of the 1916 Easter Rising (See mom, I am paying attention in class).

We walked in and were immediately greeted and dubbed as “not from around here.” Of the 20 people in the pub (including us) we had the pleasure of spending a good deal of time talking to Gerry…. Who we later were told was the town alcoholic.

Keep in mind, this is Ireland, for one man to call another man out as having so many pints that its too many pints… that’s saying something.

Aside from the blatantly obvious that Gerry had Guinness running through his veins, we learned that back in his prime Gerry was a schoolteacher who taught History and Irish. Between Gerry’s thick accent and the fact that I’m pretty sure he was speaking in cursive, its hard to say what we talked about. I know there was something involving hurling, Gealic football and the “hills” we were going to visit the following day.

When Gerry finished his pint we managed to sneak away to the Forge where we met Dermot. Dermot was the bartender and the one who informed us of Gerry’s place among the town. He told us that it wasn’t necessarily that Gerry was takin the piss with us (he truly believed what he was saying), but we shouldn’t listen to a word he said.

Not a problem Dermot, couldn’t even if I wanted to.

Dermot gave us the impression that Wicklow doesn’t really see its fare share of tourists. This made sense considering we were asked what we were doing in Wicklow at every shop we entered... 

After being looked at like an exhibit in the zoo we decided to head back to our hostile and try and get some rest before our long day in the mountains.

Well at least we tried.

For those of you who have never stayed in a hostile, I’ll try to give the best description I can, and for those of you who have…. I empathize.  

In the short time we had been in our hostile we had already been serenaded by a Hungarian womans choir, awkwardly shared a couch with two German girls watching Sex and the City with German subtitles, and “met” our roommate.

Our room at Captian Halpin’s was a 6 person room occupied by Joe, Jorie, myself, and….. lets call him Steve. Steve didn’t speak English, smelled a little like moldy cheese even after a shower, snored like a banchie…and slept in the bunk right above me.

After fumbling around in the dark getting ready for bed trying not to awake  Romanian/German/Mountain man Steve, and making our beds (that we didn’t want to give too much though about what may or may not be on them) all we could do was laugh.

The night was interesting to say the least, but more on that later. 

         Until tomorrow, 


                 Cheers, 
                    Becca :)