Weekend Trip // Galway

14 February 2015

Seven of us booked a Paddy Wagon tour to Cong, Connemara and Galway.  Chris and his roommates Sascha, Kenza and Guillaume and me and my two roommates Arwin and Leonor. My roommates and I left the apartment at 7.25am to catch the tour bus that departed at 8.15am.

Our tour guide gave us little facts about the area while we were driving to get out of the city center:

• Pages in The Book of Kells are turned every day so rarely do you see the same page twice
• 350 year old Phoenix Park started as a park for royal deer
• Dublin Zoo is the 3rd oldest zoo in Europe and 5th oldest in the world
• St. Patrick's Cathedral was built to be a church in an attempt to convert the Irish to protestantism

CONG!

It took only two hours plus a short bathroom break to get to the west coast  Our first stop on the tour was Cong. Made popular by the movie The Quiet Man, Cong is a picturesque little village that sits right between the borders of County Mayo and County Galway. We only had an hour to spend in the village so we walked around and took some pictures of ourselves standing in both Galway and Mayo simultaneously. Then we visited a cemetery that contained the remains of people who died as early as 1901. The tombstones were well kept, I must admit. We had intentions of visiting Ashford Castle (now a fancy hotel) but the walk over would have been too long. We did see part of it driving around the village, however.

two counties, one me

Failte!

awesome cemetary

river that runs through the village

there's a castle turned hotel back there

ha! irish phone booth!

CONNEMARA!
Next up was the Irish wilderness that is Connemara. Connemara was greatly affected by the potato famine so most of the landscape is barren but it's SO BEAUTIFUL. My God. Another picturesque spot in Ireland. There are so many lakes, mountains, desert valleys, and of course sheep. Connemara is also filled with gorgeous stone walls (about a quarter million miles total in all of Ireland). You look at these walls and wonder how they seem to defy gravity. They are dry stone walls. No cement or mortar or any kind of binding material holding them together. Just carefully selected stones balancing to form a wall. I couldn't stop staring at them. Our tour guide told us the reason there's so many of these walls is because Ireland is a very stony place and they had to be cleared in order to make farmland. Why not walls?

Kenza, Arwin, myself, Leonor and Chris

This was amazing in person

lots of lonely houses

the black pool

We drove around other parts of Connemara and stopped several times to take photos.

Before driving off we stopped for another bathroom break. Sascha was showing me on his phone that we were near the Atlantic ocean. I asked the tour guide if it was possible to somehow get to the ocean and there was! Sascha, Arwin Leonor and I found a spot and there it was! The great Atlantic ocean. I was happy to see some form a beach, and sand and shells. I miss the salty air. I was most excited to finally have been able to touch the Atlantic Ocean on both sides! Hahah

little towns in Connemara where only Irish is spoken

touching the atlantic from this side!

the tour guide thought I was having some religious experience haha

go knights!

GALWAY!
Last on the tour was Galway city! A city where literally half of the population is under 25. But that makes sense--it's a college town and has the feel of one. My impression of Galway was that it's very artsy and cultural. We got to Galway at around 3.45 and had two hours to spare so we walked around the city center. Bought post cards, checked out a market and listened to a few street performers. We also hung around the Spanish Arch area which was really nice. It was something I would expect to see in a movie--students playing soccer, groups of girls having a picnic near the canal, couples every where. Galway has a nice vibe.

market in the city center

hand made art (Arwin bought a few)

shopping in the city center

near the spanish arch

walking back to the bus to go home!

So that was the end. We left Galway near 6pm and got to Dublin around 8pm. Great day!


-SX