Enniskerry and The Powerscourt Estate

This weekend we took a trip to the beautiful, Irish estate called Powerscourt. It took us about 15 minutes to get there, which pretty much means it’s right here in our back yard. The bus dropped us off in the adorable village of Enniskerry and we tromped our way through a forest to the estate grounds. One bad thing - while the forests here are beautiful, they are also chock full of huge spider webs and yes . . . huge, freaking spiders! Anyways, the estate building itself was built back in the 1800’s. The house is HUGE and it is reported to have the most beautiful gardens in all of Ireland.

Our luck held out, as we have continued to have absolutely gorgeous weather for our weekend trips, and the weather this weekend was particularly amazing! Bright and sunny, and about 65 degrees – perfect for a walk in the gardens! But I suppose that my weekends have pretty much been evened out by the unbelievable amount of rain I’ve had to tromp through each day during the week on my walk to school! But I digress . . . At Powerscourt, we started out in the grounds section called Tower Valley. As we walked the trail we came around the corner and saw this ridiculously picturesque tower sitting among these beautiful trees. Obviously we climbed to the top of the tower and did a little “Rapunzel, Rapunzel let down your hair” routine . . . we couldn’t resist! The place was full of tourists, so we figured we could let down the "we're locals" routine for a short period of time! We then continued our journey through the Japanese Peace Gardens, into the Pet Cemetery (with stones dating back to the 1800’s), out to the Dolphin Pond, and into the amazing Walled Gardens. This is definitely the place that movies are made of . . . and actually we found out that the estate was used in the film “The Count of Monte Cristo”. We were very impressed.

I’m now using the rest of this gorgeous weekend to prepare for my upcoming observation and evaluation! My student teaching supervisor flew into Ireland today (he lives in Wales) – what a job, huh?! He gets to fly around Europe, visiting different countries and towns, evaluating teachers and generally having a good time! Anyways, we’re meeting for drinks tonight and then it’s all business . . . he’ll be observing me teach for the day on Tuesday. I'm thinking it's a little too much to ask that my kids be angels that day, so while I'm hoping for perfect behavior, I'll settle for no kids breaking down crying!!! Just kidding, sort of . . . seriously, it happens more often than you'd think! I'll keep you posted!

Thanks for checking in on me! Hope to talk to you all soon!