Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Monday, September 1 - Day 3

Roundwood to Glendalough, with a pit stop in Laragh; about 6.56 miles/10.56 kilometers

Breakfast: cereal, orange juice, yogurt, tea (with milk and sugar of course), toast & mini baguettes, tomatoes, hash browns (cooked like the waffle fries at Chik-Fil-A), Irish-style bacon, sausage, and black pudding/blood sausage (which actually isn't bad, but after eating everything else I just had no more room). Everything was delicious.

(For a picture reference, check Wikipedia, then add tomatoes and mushrooms. Now, imagine eating that every morning for a week...good thing we were walking every day!)

We walked around the town a little bit, mostly in order to get some supplies at the pharmacy. The trashcans are sponsored by the Tidy Towns Committee, which is ridiculously quaint. We head out shortly; we're all still incredibly sore, but we did some stretches, and at least today is shorter than yesterday.

Right: Another one for the tiny wildlife collection!


The trail really was better today--shorter and less up&down. We stopped in Laragh for lunch (via a detour that was actually shorter than staying on the Way). We ate at a restaurant (the only one around, apparently) called the Wicklow Heather--delicious, kind of fancy food (we shared a gorgonzola tart, and I had a tortilla wrap with goat cheese and roasted veggies). We enjoyed many pots of tea while we sat out the rain that arrived just afte we did.

Then we continued on to Glendalough, about 2km further, and checked into the hostel that apparently had never made our reservation (luckily they had a room). This hostel (run by the same company as the one in Knockree) is not quite as nice as the other, and we've concluded that all things considered (like having to pay extra for towels and breakfast, and the poor quality of the beds), it wouldn't really have been that much more expensive just to stay at B&Bs the whole time.

After leaving our things in the room, we wandered the nearby St. Kevin's cemetary. St. Kevin's is another trail (much shorter) you can hike around here; apparently there are several little trails in this area.

We stopped by the Glendalough Hotel Bar/Lounge for some mediocre food and our daily pint (Brandi has actually taken to ordering hot toddys, known simply as a hot whiskey here) before heading back to the hostel. Brandi and Keller did some laundry while we played a game of Rook.

Tomorrow is another lightish day on the trail, but for the fourth day of hiking we ae considering paying someone to cart our packs to the next town while we hike without them, as it is going to be the longest, toughest day of the trip, Brandi is still under the weather, and I seem to have strained my knee yesterday.

More pictures from Monday

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