Glendalough

So this Saturday two of my flat mates and I took a day trip to Glendalough (pronounced glen-da-lock). It's an hour south of Dublin in county Wicklow, so that makes a grand total of three counties I've been to! :)
So far the weather here has been surprisingly great, not cold or rainy at all. How very un-Irish! But of course it poured on Saturday. Which wasn't too bad, it made everything greener. Glendalough is an old Irish monastary town. Founded by St. Kevin in the 5th century, and later on in the 10th century it became a whole town for monks. They grew crops there, raised livestock, and copied manuscripts and did other monk-ish things. In the town the main church there is the only church that old that still has its roof intact. It has a super tall round tower next to the main church which used to serve as a lookout tower/landmark for those trying to find the place. And by super tall I mean 300 ft! We got a tour of the old town and got to walk around and look at all the cool old celtic cross tombstones. Which I learned about in my Pagan Celts class. The old celtic crosses, you know the cross with the ring....

The ring behind the cross symbolizes the Pagan Celts belief in the 'sun God', they joined it to the cross when they were assimilated into Christianity.

Glendalough means 'glen of two lakes' in Gaelic, and sure enough there are two lakes! My roommates and I hiked to the upped one and the hike was breathtakingly beautiful! So many plants, moss, and overall foliage. It was all bright green in the rain and it was very very pretty. It was so neat to visit this place because I have never seen anything so old before! America is a baby compared to other countries, and I guess I never really experienced that before.
If you look closely you can see the church in front of the tower!



This is a tiny model of what the place looked like way back in the day.