David nicely set Sally and I up for a private "Tour by a local" of County Wicklow last week. It was gorgeous!! We started with a drive down the coast, as our friendly guide told us lots about history and local lore. We drove near Bono's house and [strangely?] saw Enya's castle estate.
She first took us to Powerscourt Estate, rated as #3 in the World's Top Gardens by National Geographic. They were truly amazing, ranging from English-style to Japanese to Italian with lots of gold leaf and lily ponds. The house burnt down in the 1970s and never was completely rebuilt so there are no longer house tours. The Powerscourt family seems to have at some point owned most of Wicklow, so we learned a lot about their heritage. They also had a pet cemetery on site which featured not only dogs (a lot of chows, Jack Russells), a few ponies, and—most notably—2 cows. Sally found a redwood tree and hugged it because it reminded her of California.
On the way to and from Powerscourt, we drove through the delightful town of Enniskerry, where they just finished up filming Disenchanted...so the town itself was still quite dressed up but unfortunately we missed seeing Amy Adams and McDreamy.
Next we drove through the astonishing Wicklow Mountains (actually apparently none of which qualify as mountains by height; all less than 600 m in height) which I can imagine would be rather dour on a normal gray day.
We saw many other movie sights (apparently they call this area the Hollywood of Ireland) including the active set of the viking show "Vallhalla" near Guinness Lake.
Finally, we walked around a reservoir that provides us with our water here in Dublin. I love that there are walking trails everywhere and most private land is open to people walking through. So different from how private land is considered in the states!
I know that tree liked the hug!
The redwood hug was a sweet detail