Some of my group fighting jet lag on the first day by walking around the Temple Bar district, a popular area for tourists.

This is the building that housed the kitchens of Glendalough monastery, most famous for the tales of Saint Kevin. The Irish love to tell tourists the story of Kevin stripping off his clothes and rolling around in a briar bush because he suffered a lustful thought.

These are some of the graves in Glendalough. A lot of the most prominent Irish men and women of the past two centuries are buried here and it was seen as a great honor to have your family name represented among the headstones. Glendalough literally means ‘Glen of the Two Lakes’ in Celtic and it is so named for the two lakes that border the monastery within the valley.

This is my Model UN group climbing the cliffs of Hoath, a small Irish town famous for it’s seals and fishing boats. These cliffs face the English Channel and offer the most beautiful views I have ever witnessed. To put this in perspective, the properties built into the cliff faces lower down are valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And people pay it, gladly.

A shot of the hills behind the cliffs of Hoath, almost as impressive as the cliffs themselves.

Outside my hotel, preparing to venture into Ireland proper.

Guess how much the space between these doors costs? Three million euro. Not dollars, euro. When I asked an Irishman I met while on this trip why all the doors in Ireland are different colors, he said that traditionally, each Irish family had a specific color on their door. As Ireland expanded and modernized, the diversity simply became a part of the culture of Dublin and other Irish cities.

Can never get enough artistic lens flare.

This is a large park in Dublin, one of the main attractions any tour guide is going to put on your itinerary. It is actually quite large and has a monument to author James Joyce hidden behind a tree deep inside. Check it out.

This is a large park in Dublin, one of the main attractions any tour guide is going to put on your itinerary. It is actually quite large and has a monument to author James Joyce hidden behind a tree deep inside. Check it out.

Though Dublin is comparatively young for a European capital, it is still much older than American cities. Because of this, the skyline is much lower than you might expect if you are a regular of New York, Chicago, etc. The upside to this is that it feels much friendlier at ground level, even if aerial photographs look less impressive. It also means architects had more time to concentrate on making the fewer floors more individually attractive, which makes Dublin the most architecturally impressive city I have ever been in. There’s also been a movement by citizens to preserve this style within the city, which is much appreciated in light of the more generic trend of other growing capitals in the world.

Another aspect of Dublin that caught me off guard is the roadway behavior. There’s the obvious difference between right and left sides of the road in America, but it’s much more than that. Double decker buses are everywhere in Dublin and weave in and out of traffic like you would not think possible. This contributes to the stellar public transportation system in the area, but it also clears the way for cyclists, who are much more respected there than in Phoenix or New York. It’s not uncommon to see packs of cyclists in suits and ties following in the wake of a double decker bus during the morning rush hour. It’s likely to become an even more common sight in coming years, as Dublin is fast becoming the software capital of the world. The Irish government had already posted signs all over the city encouraging bicycle use while I was there.

A lucky shot of a mother and child in in a park in Dublin.

The cobblestone walkway to the monastery at Glendalough. There is a stone to the right of this picture (unfortunately outside the frame) that was used as a sanctuary in past centuries. Thieves and sinners would flee here and claim sanctuary upon touching the rock, which would oblige the monks to shelter them for a time.

The archway at Trinity College, where our group saw the book of Kells on display. Amazing book with an amazing line, but it is worth the wait in the end.