On today’s day trip, we took the scenic route and went to the less urban parts of Ireland, first on a farm up in the Wicklow mountains to watch and interact with some sheep and then into Kilkenny to visit some castles and walk around a bit. The whole experience was a great change of pace from the more regimented big city life that has been so far in Dublin. Also, both of the tour guides from yesterday and today knew how to sing a couple of Irish tunes! Quite the pleasant surprise indeed.

Something that was surprising was that the communication between myself and fellow Irishmen in Wicklow and Kilkenny was pretty similar to Dublin from what I could tell in my limited experience. Granted, we only had time to thoroughly visit the Wicklow sheep farm and lakes and the Kilkenny Castle and restaurant. It might have not helped that we all were tourists among tourists, especially on the farm but also in and around Kilkenny. My guess is that the people running the farms and restaurants know this and perhaps adjusted accordingly. It was also kind of difficult to get more in-depth communication in these locations for a few reasons. For starters, the restaurant in Kilkenny we went to, The Playwright, had at least eight servers take orders, ask if everything was doing alright, and finally take the check. Now, I am not sure if this is part of rural Irish culture or just the way the restaurant was doing things, but it was definitely out of the ordinary. . The main parts of communication stayed relatively the same for the most part. Since the rest of the trip will mainly consist of attractions in and around Dublin, perhaps some subtle differences that I did not notice today will be more apparent.