A long weekend with my sister

Friday evening:

At this Friday, we decided to meet with Sabine, our instructor from work at Germany.
She is here for one week to spend her vacation in Dublin, Ireland. We met at Alfie Byrnes, a pub and restaurant in Dublin City. Luckily Sabine and her husband arrived early enough to get a seating area outside. The temperature was rising up to 21°C. A really enjoying evening. All of us, (Dorian, Tobi, Tom and I) were talking about our jobs, our time we spent here and what we had visited already. We had a nice chat and stayed until the sun went down behind buildings.

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Saturday 05/05/2018:

Saturday started relaxed. We slept in and I made breakfast for us both. Mary and Paul went to their boat for the long weekend, so we are alone until Monday evening.
The breakfast included omlette, croissants, toast and juice or tea.
We enjoyed it and the sun started to shin very warm into the kitchen.
Nothing big was planned for this day, except laundry. So we put our clothes together and used the washing mashine. In the meantime we layed down in the garden and listened to some music in the sunshine.

After a while, and after a lot of washing, be went to the local shoppping centre, the Omni.
We bought something to drink and little snacks.

My sister arrived 08:30 PM at the Dublin Aiport. Tom and I were waiting for her. I organized her a visitor leapcard. So she will be able to travel with all public transport systems for 72 hours. Compared to our costs for traveling, is this visitor leapcard really cheap.

The anticipation to see her was really big. It is nice of her to visit me here.

Paul and Mary had no problem with her staying over for three nights. She had her own room, a little bit small, but it is possible to sleep in it :).

We had a lot of to talk, her times in Germany and our times here.

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Sunday 06/05/2018:

We had to get up early. Together with Dorian and Patrick we decided to go to the Wicklow Mountains Nationalpark. They told us a nice place of this huge Nationalpark is Glendalough, a small town at the south side of the Nationalpark.

We booked train tickets to get there close as possible.

A wonderful day, sunshine and just small clouds far away.
The train went all the way along the sea, what a beautiful view.

We arrived in Rathdrum, the trainstation from which you have to travel by car, or in our case, by taxi to Glendalough.

It was really full. A lot of people in their cars were traveling to the little town. We had to walk the last few meters, because the traffic stucked.

Finally at the visitor centre near the nationalpark, we saw the reason, why everyone was getting here. The beautiful park area near the lake.

But before we take a rest, we had to do something for it. We decided for the advanced path to hike. According to the map we will need approx. 10 kilometers and 3 hours.

It was a wide trail, but it went steep up.

We reached over 200 meters in high and the view was stunning!

You can click on every picture to enlarge!

After a while, the trail changed from shady, because of the large trees, to sunny. We passed the high trees and the sun shined in full strength on us.

Finally we reached the view point. We took rest at a little bench and enjoyed the view on the lake.

The coming way was mostly downhill. Easy to manage and it went shady again. A little bit cooler.

On the way down, we passed a waterfall and little river, which ran through the forrest.

And finally after more then 12 kilometers from where we left the taxi, we reached the lake. A lot of people were laying down in the grass, made a picknick or went swimming.

We rest for a while in the shadows and enjoyed the view and the fresh wind from the lake.

Dorian took a beautiful picture from my sister and me:

On the way from the upper lake back to the visitor centre, we passed a very old cemetery.

It is over 1000 years old. With a  very old chruch and lot of small buildings.

And still a clear blue sky and the temperature rised to over 25°C.

We took the same way back, with the taxi to the train station and then back to Dublin City. We walked over 20km that day and our feet made us feel that.

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Monday 07/05/2018:

Luckily the Monday was a Bank Holiday. It is the first Monday in May.

Tom, Leonie (my sister) and myself were going to City Centre. Our plan for today is taking the Dart to Killiney, a little town southern of Dublin. It is really close to the sea and has a nice beach.
The weather changed a little bit. We passed the best days and clouds were coming. But it was still warm, close to 18°C. The Dart we took, needed 40 minutes to Killiney. We were happy to get out, because to air inside was terrible and no windows to open.

We walked around this small town, and up to the Killiney Park. It is on top of a little mountain or hill. Tom wasn’t that happy to hike again, but as soon as he saw the view from the top, he was speechless like all of us.

We had a great view all around, because we were on the very top.

If the clouds woudn’t block our view, we could possibly see Dublin from here. Although it is over 15 km away.

After a rest, the way down was easy. We took the steps through the forrest and to the rails. From there we had a beautiful view along the beach of Killiney.

Killiney is more of a town, where a lot of mansions are, so more of the wealthy people are living here.

I love the smell of the sea, and the sound the see makes. The walk along the beach took us some time. It was a beach with stones and little pebbles, not much sand.

After we walked back to the railway station, we took the next train to Dublin City.

We walked to our favorite burger restaurant, Bunsen.
It was an exhausting weekend, but I can’t decide which day was better, or which place we visited was more stunning.

We were happy, as we arrived back home, to lay down and put the feet up…

 

The next Blog-post will be about my work and maybe some more pictures of it.

– See you soon