Unfortunately, since it is winter, everything is varying shades of brown so you will have to use your imagination to witness the beautiful majesty of the environment. In the summer, the same somewhat lackluster hills would be brilliant shade of green and the heather would be vibrant purple and yellow.
On the bus, there was a young couple from Bristol, England. They were wonderfully nice; I got the feeling that if we lived in the same town, we could have been friends. Both of them were incredibly good-looking too---it's really not fair that they are attractive and have an amazing accent. I think you should only be able to have one or the other because having both just raises the standards too far! My other tour friends-for-the-day were two Americans from California studying in Rome for a semester, and a girl from Brazil on holiday.
And then, there was my bus driver/tour guide -- Ed. If I had to take a guess, I would wager that he was in his late seventies. Lined with character, his face told a story. He had broken blood vessels in his cheeks, a red nose, and a wonderful smile. He was exactly what you would picture an elderly Irishman to be like: kind, pleasant, and exceptionally gregarious. He could talk the tale off a cat. Even when there was absolutely nothing to say, he would find a way to comment on the silence.
I didn't realize it, but the tour wound up being about nature...and also about Hollywood. An exceptional amount of movies are made in the Wicklow mountains because of the ideal location (and there is no tax on the set in Ireland). As the tour wore on, I thought that I had mistakenly gotten on the Homes of the Stars tour in LA. The format was the same -- we passed Bono's house, Daniel Day Lewis's favorite pub, Enya's castle-like home, and a cottage formerly owned by Mia Farrow.
Can you tell what movie was filmed in this same spot?
Answer: this is the spot where Hilary Swank meets Gerard Butler in P.S. I Love You. (Unfortunately, Gerard didn't show up today)Recognize these hills?
Braveheart was filmed here. I have no idea why they wouldn't film on location in Scotland, but nevertheless, they filmed in Wicklow.
The wind was so strong up here that I thought I was going to blow off the mountain. My hat was ripped from my head and I looked like Pippi Longstocking with my braid standing straight up into the air. I thought we might need to use a rope to fight against the current and get back to the bus. 
We also visited a waterfall. George and I climbed down to get a closer view (we found out later that this was prohibited...and also probably pretty stupid, but like all bad ideas, it sounded cool at the time).
I made new friends on the trip....
I'm unsure why the terminator was at the restaurant where we stopped for lunch. Maybe he was there to make sure that "I'll be back!" (sorry for the bad pun)And I also saw my first real life Irish sheep----
There are more sheep than people in Wicklow (or at least it seemed like it). All of the sheep are females and all of them are currently pregnant. (That's one lucky ram!)
Our last stop was Glendalough and St. Kevin's monastery. These are all ruins now because they were destroyed first during the Viking raids of the 9th and 10th century. Then they were completely burnt down during King Henry VIII's reign when he was trying to rid the kingdom of all things Catholic.
The cross design is uniquely Celtic because it combines old and new religion. The cross obviously symbolizes Christianity, but they added the circle around the center in homage to their old Celtic god of the sun. 
Glendalough means "Land of the Two Lakes"After a day of being pummelled by crazy wind, and completely frozen, we made our way home.
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