The headline is irritating in that sense as Clonmacnoise is located on the other side of Ireland. But more about that later. This post is about further stops of our road trip.
Rock of Cashel
There are so many castles in this country, we just can’t write about them all. We have a lot of pictures. But partly, we don’t even know their names and somehow no one cares about them at all.
But we definitely knew about Rock of Cashel. It’s an Irish landmark and was built in the 4th century. In thrones on a rock and is quite pretty to look at.
Wicklow National Park
At the beginning we just planed to come here because of Glendalough. But our AirBnB host told us about two other sites we didn’t have on our radar yet.
Powerscourt Estate
One of them was the mighty Powerscourt Estate located around 20km south of Dublin. It’s a beautiful 190.000m² estate with an insanely beautiful garden. We arrived there. But we just ate and saw the house and the garden from above.
Entry fee was 10€ per person which was too much for us seeing bus loads of people walking around here and pushing each other through the gardens. It wasn’t really appealing to us.
If you’re not in Ireland in peak season pay the entrance fee. It’s definitely worth it.
Powerscourt Waterfall
Instead we continued our drive to the eponymous waterfall. It’s near the Powerscourt Estate and rushes around 100m into the deep. It’s Ireland’s highest waterfall and really beautiful to look at. There are many Irish families using this place for a picnic or a relaxed walk.
Glendalough
Glendalough is a valley which is known for its monastic settlement. It was founded it the 6th century by a holy man named Kevin who wanted to live here as a hermit.
The pan didn’t work out so well as soon others followed him. Despite the many attacks in the past the former monastic settlement is quite well preserved and offers you those perfect Ireland pictures every Ireland visitor somehow is somehow looking for.
Clonmacnoise
This leads us to Clonmacnoise which we visited on our way from Belfast to Galway. It’s a monastery built in the 6th century and is as well visited as the monastic settlement of Glendalough. Some original relics can be found in the museum next to it.
Outside there are the fake versions of them for people to take pictures. But at least they look like the originals.
You can visit either Clonmacnoise or Glendalough or both. We can’t recommend you one of them being better than the other. But they’re similar so if you don’t have the time choose of them. But we hope you do and visit both!