#She’ll be at the TOP of my 2025 list though

[countingandsnarkingon]

So like can I call a mid-year audible and put Jana on my pregnancy predictions list, is that allowed?

[sangria-and-guinness-shenanigans]

Saturday, January 4, 2025 | Dublin & Wicklow, Ireland

Today was our bus trip!!! A colleague of mine at UMass suggested doing a bus trip through the Wicklow mountains, a national park south of Dublin. We found this tour with Wild Wicklow and it’s been rated #1 experience in Ireland and #2 bus trip in the world by TripAdvisor! We were really excited to have a relaxing day where we didn’t have to make any decisions or navigate ourselves anywhere.

Our tour guide Patrick, a local, picked us up in Dublin along with about 12 other people. He drove us through Dublin giving us some of the city’s history, then out of the city along the coast. We drove by Dún Laoghaire Harbor, which is where some scenes from my movie Sing Street were filmed.

Our driver had a lot to say about B-list celebrities who live in the area or used to live here in the 80s and have since moved away and/or died or who simply passed through one time. Also he told us a lot about the housing market and driving laws. He was cracking us up from the minute we got on the bus!!

Our first tour stop was Killiney Hill, a short walk with great views of Dublin. We saw a ton of adorable dogs out and about. There are so many spaniels here, we saw one springer spaniel who looked just like our Jamie at home!! Our tour guide told us he lived in Upper Darby for 2 years in his youth, we’re obsessed with him.

Next stop was Avoca, a little shopping center with nice wool goods.

Then we were headed up into the Wicklow mountains! It reminded me a lot of the Brecon Beacons, a national park in Wales. As we went up in elevation we saw more and more frost, until we got to the bog at the top of the range which was so frosted over it felt like another planet. Also in that bog is the stream that forms the beginning of the River Liffey that runs through Dublin near our hostel.

We had several stops along the way at lookouts over gorgeous valleys and it even started snowing lightly! The twisty roads on the edge of the mountain were making me very nervous, even though the road was pretty wide and had stone walls along the edge.

We had lunch at a little restaurant in the town of Lauragh (pronounced like if you said the name “Laura” and sneezed halfway through). Then we saw the ruins of a monastery and cemetery. We also took a bit of a rainy walk around some small lakes.

Back on the bus as we were getting ready to head back to Dublin, our driver Patrick mentioned offhandedly that he went to school at Synge Street, the school where my aforementioned favorite movie takes place. If we weren’t already obsessed with Patrick, that sealed the deal!

We’ve been keeping a list of our favorite Patrick-isms. Here are a few:

He likes to say “has anyone ever heard of…” and then say something extremely common like “ferns” or “ash trees”

He uses the word “say” in the same way a Valley girl says “like”

When pointing out historical things, he usually says “and if you were to ask me why [insert detail here], I wouldn’t know.”

Here’s a direct quote, from when he was talking to a Chicagoan couple on the bus about the US election: ���We have a saying called ‘dilly dally,’ and with Joe Biden, he wasn’t right.” (Don’t worry, he’s no fan of Trump either)

We saw some cyclists going up the mountain when it was starting to snow and he said, “I like to call them martyrs for the cause, everyone and their grandmother knows it’s going to snow today”

We love Patrick and we loved our tour!!!!! As we got off the bus he gave us a hug and said “Philadelphia freedom!” Philadelphia freedom indeed!!!

We grabbed a quick dinner and then joined our friends from last night on another hostel pub crawl. I barely lasted through 1.5 bars so I went home, but as I write this Anna is still out! Maybe if we’re lucky she’ll write another guest post tomorrow :)