After breakfast, we decided to brave the elements. It was rainy and windy, especially near the harbor. I mean, umbrellas-turning-inside-out windy. After sloshing around in the rain for a bit, and seeing a shopping mall in Eyre Square, we returned to the hotel to pack up and checkout.
We drove northwest from Galway, with Westport in mind as the final destination. The first place we stopped was Aughnanure Castle, which wasn't in the plans, but I like castles so I went from 100 to 30 in about 20 feet and turned down the tiny road, following the signs. Aside from the rain, the castle exploration was awesome.
The first town we went through was Oughterard, on the shore of a lake. These "towns" are basically clusters of buildings, close to the road, and a set of "slow down" and "speed limit 50 km/h" signs. They are finished before you realize that you're in a town, most of the time.
On the way to Oughterard, we had seen signs for a "Ireland's only Showmine", and the mine is maintained by the same people as the castle, so they had some sort of show-this-ticket-at-the-next-place-and-get-a-discount deal going on.
The mine was a Galena mine, so it yielded mostly lead and some silver, in the mid 1800s. The mine tour only went about halfway down the mine, because they hadn't made steps and smooth floors for the 2nd half yet, but it was pretty neat. They were mining into marble, so it required drilling and blasting, and didn't require shoreposts or anything like that. The tourguide seemed genuinely interested in the subject, which makes a big difference.
Next, we stopped at a craft shop in the middle of nowhere, that somehow made it into the guidebook. There was a bubble gum machine that had polished stones in it, which was apparently was hazard enough to earn a warning label.
Onward through Clifden, a town of 1,100 people, considered a city in this area. The area, Connemara, is considered sparsely populated by the locals, which is saying something. Apparently a large portion of the population emigrated, and a lot of others died in the famine... and it's been sparse ever since.
Next was a tour of Kylemore Abbey. We were too late to tour the walled gardens, though, which was just fine with both of us. The abbey itself was ridiculously opulent, since it was built for some rich family in the 1800s. Then the guy's wife died of an illness when she was 45, so he built a mausoleum and buried her in it. And then he had a mini-cathedral built in her honor. All of this is at the base of a mountain, along the edge of a lake. The abbey is still used, with nuns and everything, as a boarding school, so we couldn't see too much of the inside. Poor kids.
Then it was just me, Sabrina, and the sheep for the next few miles of beautiful scenery. Since it was raining a lot of the day, there were waterfalls cascading down the mountains all over the place. The further north we went, the more the weather cleared up.
We ended up in Westport, checked into our hotel, ate, and ended up at (surprise) a pub. This pub had live music, and was full of foreigners "on holiday." Sabrina knew the words to some of their songs, oddly enough. It was just getting dark at 10:30 when we left the pub.
I've been writing this in the bar of the hotel where we're staying, because they don't have wireless, but you can get some wireless signals from one corner of the bar. They have ethernet jacks in the rooms, but who would have guessed that I'd need a network cable? Pfff.
Some old (think senior citizens) women saw me and Sabrina huddled over the laptop, and asked what we were doing. We had a lovely chat with them, and I demonstrated what the laptop is for, with the writing and the pictures, etc. It's tough to understand them, partly because they're local, and partly because they've been drinking whiskey the whole time we've been sitting here.
If you'd like to see all 110 pictures that we took today, start here. Tomorrow is supposed to be nicer, and we're going to take the scenic route up to Donnegal. (Not highly regarded by the old women.)
No comments:
Post a Comment