Although I don't usually do pictures in this blog, I'm going to post a really great picture of Dorothy and me at Glendalough during that grueling hike I posted about two times ago.  The picture is great and it gives a really good sense of the terrain.  That little boardwalk was quite wet and were it not for the many nails embedded, we would definitely have slipped off into the wet bog!  The up and down walking was a real challenge.  If you enlarge the picture you can see the path from about the halfway mark in the middle right.  From here, there was another quarter to go.  This picture is now my screen saver and I'm guessing I will start to have fonder memories of the walk as time goes by, but right now, I still remember it as very difficult. Yet, just this week we've booked a walking tour in Scotland for next September!  It will be between towns on the coast, so I'm hoping not this rough.  We're going with friends from Virginia.  They have done these walking tours before. I'm pretty sure they are both hale and hearty and just hope they are also not race walkers!  I have to say, the pictures of walking tours we've done are always great to see, I have to remember that while I'm doing it. 

 This week we have been doing things pretty close to home, although we have booked trips to Madrid for January and Paris for March, so we have stuff to look forward to after Christmas.  Last Saturday, we met one of the women we met in Majorca at a pub in Rathmines and had a great evening of Irish music in Grace's Pub.  She brought along her husband and a friend of his, so it was a nice group.  I really enjoyed the singing.  There were some familiar songs and some that I'd never heard before, including several that were identified as "Orange," Protestant songs from the north.  That was a real surprise and an indication of how the peace process has taken hold.  In the past, I think any Orange song sung in Dublin would be met with howls of protest.  It was good to hear.

On Friday this week we were included in the Hannigan's family Christmas dinner at a restaurant in Terenure, a nice little Dublin village.  We met the two siblings, Christine and Tom, that I haven't seen since they were toddlers.  Another very nice evening.

I'll end with a little update on my set dancing.  I'm actually getting better at it.  If you are interested, here's a youtube link to see one that we do at the end of each night:  It's called the balleyvorney:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh6Qz6C5j14 .  This is a pretty long and vigorous dance, but it's as fun as it looks.  I'm really happy with this class.  We're about to break for Christmas and it will not resume until January.  I'll miss it for the month, that's for sure.