Glendalough: The Monastic City

Today we visited the ancient Celtic town of Glendalough where we learned all about the origins of the Celtic church, Christianity in Ireland and how everything current has been built on the work and struggles of our ancestors. I can say that in such a beautiful place as Glendalough that this fact really comes out when you walk through the former monastery, ruins and cemetery as well as the wonderful landscape.

Our guide for this trip was Markus; a man whose enthusiasm for Celtic history and spirituality really brought the place to life even though it was a very cold and windy day. Markus shared a particularly interesting Celtic tradition of Anan Cara (which I'm sure is misspelled)means "soul friend" in Gaelic. It was explained by Markus to be a kind of bond between two people where they confide in each other their thoughts and dreams which I thought was a pretty neat concept; kind of like a super-best friend.

We also went on a hike after lunch to the upper lake, where it then proceeded to rain on us a little bit. From there we trudged up a hill to see some waterfalls and take some great pictures.

Since it's pretty late here I'll just end this post with some pictures from today. Thank you all for following and reading! Looks like videos will not be possible until I move to Dublin on Saturday the 30th, but it is very possible that I don't get them up by then either. Only time will tell if this blog will change from video based to picture-and-text based.










This is the group minus about 3-4 people.