there once was a girl in limerick...: OPC weekend.

Friday 2/10-Sunday 2/12 - Glendalough and Wicklow Mountains

PARTY PARTY PARTY PARTY!!! CRAIC CRAIC CRAIC!! (oh yeah... and some hiking!)

I Spent the weekend at the Glendalough International Hostel with 120 other University of Limerick students... all members of the Outdoor Pursuits club (OPC). We thankfully had the entire hostel booked out to our group... a regulation for OPC put in place by managment for good reason!

We arrived on Friday after a 4 hour bus trip from the University. I managed to avoid my usual bout of motion sickness by snagging a seat in the front, and by not drinking like a fish with my fellow students! Needless to say, everyone was feeling grand when we pulled into the hostel. Sydney and I found a group of 4 girls looking for a few more roommates... we joined them for a memorable weekend in room 20! About 5 minutes after arriving, while I was making my bed, the legs fell off... Sadly, this might have actually improved the comfort level of the bed!

Sydney and I finally made it to bed around 1:30 on Friday night with the intention of getting up at 8:00 to join in on the "experienced hike" of the day. WOW... and they weren't kidding about it being for experienced hikers! We left the hostel at about 10am Saturday and headed for the Wicklow mountains! We worked our way up and around the lake the lake we started at, seen in the picture below (this picture was taken at our first big ascent of about 4 or 5... before the clouds/fog got too thick to have a view).

Our hike lasted for about 4 hours before we opted to join the first group back to the hostel... the hike down took another 1.5 hours! Here a few of the pictures that I managed to snag while I wasn't too scared I was trip/slip with my camera in my hand!

Saturday night was the OPC annual Valentine's Day ball... one of the hostel conference rooms was decorated with pink balloons and cupid cut-outs along with your usual cliche decorations. We eventually made our way to the one pub within walking distance of the hostel, I'm sure we were a sight for the locals. When we finally made it back to the hostel around 2:00 the last think I was worried about was the angle of my bed... I slept like it was nobody's business!

Before heading back to Limerick on Sunday we went for a relaxed hike around the Glendalough monastery ruins and saw some beautiful old buildings and structures... even a campanile!