Our tour started out at the Ross Errilly Friary, which is one of the oldest friaries in Ireland. It was burned and rebuilt seven times. Today, it has a number of graves inside, and it's still quite intact.
From there, we drove on to Cong, which is a small village that is famous because it was where the movie, The Quiet Man, was filmed. It was a movie featuring John Wayne. I've never seen the movie, but I took some pictures that were featured in the movie. Overall, it was quaint and quite beautiful.
The tour zigzagged between County Galway and County Mayo, which are both covered with lakes and valleys. It was all quite beautiful.
Along the way, we saw a Connemara horse that came right up to us when our driver honked.
We also saw a sheep herder training his sheep dog. It was quite fascinating and reminded me of the movie, Babe. The poor sheep looked absolutely terrified of the dog.
Among the hills and valleys, there is Ireland's lone fjord. Where we stopped stood a tree that had decorations and ribbons all over it. Apparently, it's the fairy tree, where people can tie their wishes in hopes that they will come true. Interesting.
From there, we headed to our main attraction—Kylemore Abbey, which is a Romantic castle nestled on a lake at the base of a mountain. It was built by a wealthy man named Mitchell Henry for his wife, Margaret. Sadly, she died when she was only 45 years old, so he added a small Gothic church to memorialize her and also had her body entombed in a mausoleum right next to the church.
We had two hours to walk around and check out the grounds, so I took some time to have a nice lunch at their visitor center first. I was starving, so I went for their Traditional Irish Lamb Stew. Tasty, but too gamey/full of lamb-taste though (if you know what I mean...lamb is not easy to cook).
After lunch, I went on a trip up to the Victorian-Walled Gardens. Quite nice and well-restored by an order of Benedictine Nuns. There was a shuttle bus running every ten minutes from the visitor center to the gardens. Glad I didn't have to hike all the way up there. It kind of reminded me of Roller Coaster Tycoon (the computer game).
The castle itself has only three rooms available to visit, even though there are over 30 rooms in the castle. Nevertheless, the rooms featured were quite nice.
After the castle visit, I walked a short distance over to the church. It's built like a miniature Gothic Cathedral. There was nice music playing inside, and it's rather peaceful. It's also right by the lake.
I only stayed there for a few minutes as it was quite small. I walked behind the church and saw a small building that I initially thought was an outhouse. Turns out, that was the mausoleum.
Walking back, the view of the lake was gorgeous. It was really very peaceful there, and it really reminded me of the Lake of Avalon from Arthurian legends. I half expected Excalibur to show up out of the water.
Once we returned to Galway, we headed to a restaurant recommended by our driver for dinner. It was quite good, but freezing inside. I had another dish I had not yet tried—Bangers and Mash. It's basically mashed potatoes with Irish sausages and a red onion sauce. I have to say that it was pretty good.
We walked back to the B&B after that, where I started to blog. But then we decided to walk to a nearby pub recommended by our B&B host. It's apparently quite famous and features live music in a great Irish atmosphere, so we headed there for a drink. It was quite neat, and I had two pints of Guinness, which is quite enough I might add. The place was really quite cool though.
Tomorrow, we will check out the Galway City Museum and the Salthill area around our B&B before taking the bus back to Dublin. We only have another full day in Dublin, when we plan to visit the Guinness Storehouse and a famous jail in the city. I also have a friend studying for her masters in Dublin, so we plan to meet up and hang out.
Until next time,
Sam
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