Ireland - Part II
4:11 PM
We spent a quiet night in Clifden, County Galway. Nice place. I bought claddagh symbol ring there from a local family of silversmiths. I'm in love with it. It's a beautiful symbol of love.
As we were leaving, we saw dozens of horse trailers and turned around to see what was going on. (Jo loves horses) There was a horse auction! Never seen one before and it was awesome to see my one and only consisting of elite Connemara ponies.
Kylemore Abbey. A gift of love from a wealthy man named Mitchel Henry to his wife that also happened to save the surrounding towns from deep and crippling economic crisis. The construction of this mansion and the gothic church on the grounds created jobs and later tourism for the area.
You can only visit the first floor because the once 33-bedroom mansion has been converted into a convent. Bummer. Would've been cool to see!
The woman who inspired it all. You go, girl.
The sheep are everywhere.
The little gothic church on the property. A few tweaks to this sweet little church made it even more gorgeous. Angels instead of gargoyles and such.
The marble pillars are the different colors of Irish marble from four regions. Green from Connemara, rose from Cork, black from Kilkenny, and grey from Armagh.
I'm obsessed with stained glass. Always.
We stayed in that really cute hotel that was just a few minutes from Slieve League, another amazing section of coastline. Ireland knows how to do non-beach coastline amazingly well.
Like I said. Sheep. Are. Everywhere. And it warms my heart to see them.
We tried walking up to the viewpoint until we almost got blown away by the wind AND realised that the gate that had previously prevented us from driving up was NOT locked. Thank you, Richard. (we named the rental car)
Slieve League. Spectacular.
Great even in the crazy, windy, rainy weather.
We headed east, back toward Donegal, a city we had driven through in the dark the night before. This was one of the most surprising castles being in the centre of town. Most of the castles (ruins) are off the beaten path. This was square in the centre of Donegal.
The church across the street was pretty great, too.
We headed to Northern Ireland and Giant's Causeway.
Check out the crazy cool NATURAL shape of these rocks.
Some are perfect octagons.
We 'hiked' to the top of the cliff behind Tay.
We 'hiked' to the top of the cliff behind Tay.
A gajillion stairs after a few switchbacks to get up to the top.
This sign at the top made me feel like a wimp for feeling the burn and getting a little winded after the hundreds of stairs... Not only was it difficult but the stairs are narrow and odd heights (it says: Imagine carrying sheep up here before the shepherd's steps were built.)
And with that, we called it a night at Giant's Causeway.
I had to capture them in their bickering. Two really huge basketball fans plus one average fan talking about basketball means I get to stay out of arguments about which teams are making it to the finals this year, best team, best player, love/hate LeBron, etc, etc. Not offended by it at all since I have little to offer by way of opinion and I'm glad they got to bond :)
We stayed in THE CRAPPIEST hostel in Bushmills. Seriously, horrendous. BUT we also ate the fanciest meal of the trip at the Bushmills Inn.
The fancy tea set made Jo speechless. Hard to do, I promise. We ate fancy food like salmon and Guinea fowl. Good times plus a quartet of old men playing the traditional Irish music that I adore.
Silly, but I got a kick out of the fancy bathrooms, too. Ladies.
Stay tuned for Part III
Thanks guys!
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