Dublin in March

Earlier this week we found ourselves with the opportunity to spend a bit of an extended weekend in Dublin.  On Thursday we hopped the express bus for the city with smiles on our faces and arrived to a storm of freezing temps, blasting rain and whipping wind!  The hotel I had booked is behind the O2 stadium but the bus dropped us at least 4 blocks too far west, so there we were stuck walking through the storm to the hotel.  The wind took Claude’s hat and plopped it right into the middle of the street so we had to wait for traffic to clear in order for him to bolt out into the road and recover it.  By that time it was soaking wet – good thing I had an extra stocking cap on hand!  From there the weekend could only get better.

For this stay I chose the Gibson Hotel, themed after the guitar.  It’s ultra-modern with all the amenities I wanted including being situated at the terminus of the Luas tram line for ease of travel into the city.  While I’m not very impressed with their bar and food service – I had to deliberately make my presence known each time I went in – I did get a delicious and reasonably priced cosmo.  Otherwise it was a comfortable and fairly clean place with very helpful staff.

Friday’s weather was not much better, as a matter of fact it was colder than the evening before and still raining profusely.  I tried to purchase a Luas ticket from the machine at the stop but it broke in the middle of the process and gave my money back.  At that moment the rain got much harder and began to become hail.  I thought something I can’t repeat here and walked right over to the taxi waiting outside the hotel, jumped in and asked the driver to take me to the National Museum of Ireland: Decorative Arts and History.  He didn’t know which museum I was referring to so I had to use the typical Irish method of road direction and tell him what it was near.  As we drove we had conversation about the job situation in Ireland and I found out that he had a master’s degree in public administration from a university in Poland but driving cabs in Ireland was a better paying job!  He got me as close as he could to the front of the museum and apologized for me having to walk through the rain, but I told him it was no big deal because, “I’m from Galway!”

The museum is housed in an old army barracks and is built in the shape of a large rectangle with a big courtyard in the middle.  The public part of the museum is housed on 4 floors with many different galleries holding all types of items; the exhibitions include Irish silver, coins, curator’s choice, fashion, furniture, soldiers, jewelry.  The variety of items and rooms is quite fascinating!  I took a ton of pictures and ran the camera battery down.  I put them all together in a Flickr set for your perusal.

I was going to go visit the Leprechaun Museum too but I had walked all over the first museum and the weather was so miserable that I really didn’t feel like slogging through it to stand around for much longer.  Finally managed to purchase a Luas ticket from the machine and went back to the hotel where I ordered a sandwich and a soda in the bar and finished the book I was reading (The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry), then looked up restaurants for the evening meal, went up to our room, relaxed in front of the tube and had a small nap.

Being in the capital I decided that we had to take advantage of the variety of restaurants.  Since Claude rarely gets vegetarian choices beyond the standard veggie burger, curry or pasta dish, I chose to look up the vegetarian restaurants in the city center and found three – Cornucopia, Govinda’s and Delhi O’Deli.  I just thought the name was so clever that I chose Delhi O’Deli.  We took the tram into the heart of the city and wandered around until we found the restaurant.  It’s a little hole-in-the-wall diner with a very friendly owner and absolutely delicious Indian food.  Claude’s keen eye had spotted a Parisian bakery as we passed by on the way to the restaurant so we doubled back after the meal and stopped by for a lovely dessert.  We are definitely going to visit both places again.

On Saturday Claude asked me what I wanted to do so I said I wanted to see the Old Library at Trinity College.  We managed to purchase all day tickets for the tram from those infernal machines and headed over to the college.  We walked around Parliament Square for a bit, took a few pictures.  There’s a cool spinning sculpture outside the Berkeley Library, a large golden ball with cutouts (I got a couple pictures of it) that I tried to catch on video but my camera battery gave up the ghost.  We went inside the old library building, then realized that in order to see the library itself we would have to pay the admission price of €9 each because the Book of Kells is housed in this building.   Between the place being jammed with tourists and discussion of the fact that we will be visiting the building with Claude’s parents later this year, we decided to save the money and go somewhere else.  But not before buying a cool book on forgotten Irish words.

And since we were in the area, I chose to take Claude to Cornucopia for lunch.  The food was beautiful and so delicious.  They have a fantastic selection of dishes and a queue practically out the door at lunchtime.  This place will also be on our re-visit list.

In order to explore the city further we got on the red tram line and just rode it to the end.  Dublin takes up a lot of space and the little suburbs vary widely, some scruffy looking, overrun with graffiti, some pristine and beautiful.  Along the way we noticed a young man and his friend walking along a path — I saw a boy wearing a down vest with no sleeves and naked arms; Claude saw that the young man was walking a goat!  Later on, after the tram had stopped at the terminus and the driver came out to switch to the other end of the train, he asked us, “Did ye see the lad walking the goat?”  I laughed so hard.  The menfolk saw the strange creature, the mother in me saw the boy risking exposure illness!

When we got back to the city we hopped on the other tram, the green line, and rode it out to the terminus and back.  Again we saw a wide variety of suburbs.  At one point a woman got on the tram with a baby in a gigantic pram and a little one of about 2 dragging his tiny bicycle.  The kid kept making adorable observations all the way in to the city.

By the time we finished with all our walking and riding we were pretty much set to head home.  We went back to the hotel and retrieved our bag, I grabbed a snack and a cosmo at the bar, and we managed to catch our bus home.  During the ride we swore we smelled the skunky odor of some fine weed but couldn’t figure out how someone was managing to get high on the bus without the smoke or getting busted by the driver.  It was wild.  Got home and stopped at a bar we had not yet visited which was located right by our bus stop, had some yummy burgers and watched a little rugby – Leinster beat Glasgow! – and caught the bus home.  After freezing our butts off in Dublin for 2 days Galway was practically balmy.  A nice walk by the sea before getting home was simply lovely.

Dublin is a great place to visit, for sure, but Galway is most definitely home.

– Cindy

Slowly emerging from the dark ages

So far most, if not all, of our blog posts have been about happy things, or light-hearted observations of our experiences in the last year plus of living in Galway, Ireland.  And for the most part, it has been an overwhelmingly positive and uplifting experience.  But there are deeper observations to be made – I’m going to go out on a limb and make them.

As some of you readers may know, in late October of this year a young woman of Indian descent died needlessly at University Hospital Galway while miscarrying her pregnancy.  She and her husband wanted that baby, had planned for it.  Even through the extreme pain she was suffering she knew that she was not going to be able to carry to term.  With a heart that was breaking in two she begged the doctors and nurses to help her by inducing labor.  She was told “this is a Catholic country.”  In other words, the church has so hamstrung the laws of this nation that they were not legally allowed to terminate the pregnancy as long as there was a fetal heartbeat.  She suffered the pain and humiliation of this miscarriage for 5 days before the fetus’ heart stopped.  By then she was septicemic.  Before she passed away from the infection that ravaged her system, she did point out to the staff that she was neither Irish nor Catholic.

Ireland has been taken to task on many occasions by European Union rights groups for their draconian laws and generally Catholic stance on human rights, particularly in the cases of gay rights and of abortion.  (Same-sex sexual activity has only been decriminalised since 1993.)  The Irish Constitution was amended in 1983 to ban abortion constitutionally, backed strongly by Catholic influence.  This fact amazes and stuns me.  In 1984 a 15-year-old girl named Anne Lovett and her newborn son died alone and freezing after Anne gave birth in a church yard precisely because of the stifling attitude of her religious upbringing.  In 1992 the Irish Supreme Court ruled in the X Case, which allowed for abortion in the case of risk to the mother’s life including risk of suicide.  The problem with the ruling is it is in direct opposition to the Eighth Amendment, and worse, to the Offences Against the Persons Act of 1861 – yes, you read that right, a law written in the 19th Century which is still in effect today – which makes it illegal to use drugs or instruments to cause an abortion.  The Irish Parliament has REFUSED to legislate on these issues for over 30 years now.

The Catholic church would have women believe that their lives are never at risk from pregnancy.  The government sees no problem if women choose to travel to another country to obtain abortion services.  Most private physicians will perform follow-up treatment for women who have done so.  So no one seems to understand why Irish women are so angry about Savita’s death.  The church has no intention of assisting women who can’t afford to travel, so they’re resorting to purchasing abortifacients over the internet – the import of which is also illegal.  The utter hypocrisy of not allowing babies who are still-born or die upon birth without being baptised to be buried in consecrated graveyards doesn’t seem to faze the church at all.

I’m not a religious person, neither Claude nor I are, really.  We have our individual views about it.  He tends toward the Buddhist way of thinking, I tend toward the agnostic.  No matter how you define it, we are definitely not advocates of the Catholic vision of the world.

At this point a number of EU rights groups are calling for sweeping change to these ancient laws.  Ireland is out of step with all of Europe in this regard and does not, in my opinion, deserve to hold the EU Presidency next year until its laws come in line with the rest of the Union.  The anti-choice groups are pulling out all the stops, pressuring their local politicians to not allow women the right to a safe, clean abortion in Ireland.  Women are once again being held hostage to their gender by the Catholics.

The Irish people have some fairly archaic attitudes when it comes to being open with one another, talking about sexuality and differences, speaking of uncomfortable subjects and history.  They use euphemisms to describe horrors of their history.  They have a similar stiff-upper-lip style to the British.  They call periods of anarchy in their history “the Troubles,”  like it’s a touch of the flu or sluggish bowels.  People die and they’re labeled as “the tragic.”  It’s all so … very.

– Cindy

Award winning town

Congratulations Galway!  The City of the Tribes has been awarded the Urbanism Award for greatest Town in the UK and Ireland!  But we knew that already.

– Cindy

Image courtesy of Galway City Museum

 

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

 

Irish calendar

A while ago Claude made the observation that seasons in Ireland begin and end on a different calendar than the seasons we are used to in North America.  In the states the seasons begin on the equinox or solstice, depending on which season you’re addressing.  But in Ireland they begin and end according to the Gaelic Calendar, which states that the seasons encompass these cycles: November, December, January are winter; February, March, April are spring; May, June, July are summer; August, September, October are autumn.

Strangely enough – well, to me, at least – the seasons do seem to follow this schedule.  Granted my observations are purely empirical, and then based on just one year’s worth of experience, but still…   Amazing how those ancient Celts knew their stuff way back when.

Additionally, per the Gaelic Calendar, today is the first day of the new Celtic year.  Happy Celtic New Year!

– Cindy

The Computer & Communications Museum of Ireland in Galway’s Global Village

As I spoke of previously, the Volvo Ocean Race finale came to Galway and took over the entire world – or at least every part of the city that affected us.  As part of the university’s participation, there was a space featuring courses relevant to the local area and the Innovation Pavilion housing the Computer & Communications Museum of Ireland.

The curator of the museum is an amazing man called Brendan Smith.  Typically the museum lives in a small room on the second floor of the DERI building off campus.  But during the Global Village it occupied a space that was about ten times larger than the usual space.  It features communications from the very beginning with small carved tablets through to modern-day hand-held electronic tablets (of approximately the same size!).  The computers featured are mostly from the UK and Ireland, along with a display of electronic devices made or facilitated by companies based in Ireland and Galway in specific.  The museum contains an incredible display that does not get nearly as much attention – or space – as it deserves.

So a call went out for volunteers to staff the museum while it was occupying the space in the Global Village.  A combination of my desire to see the Global Village up close along with my relentless inability to turn down a tempting volunteer opportunity and a need to keep my mind occupied before the girls arrived for our vacation meant that I went ahead and committed to several shifts at the museum.

Turns out it was a very good decision – I had so much fun!  I met a several people wanting to donate their old equipment and people who had fond memories of the old computer systems being displayed.  A number of people expressed wonder at how recent the computer revolution really is in terms of time.  The kids really loved the old Nintendo, Atari and other classic video games that were set up.  (At one point my daughter had to show one little kid just exactly what a floppy disk was and where to insert it!)  The telegraph machine was also very popular.  I met several people associated with DERI and spoke with interesting people of all ages and from all walks of life.

Your hosts as their Star Trek alter egos

Another display included in the pavilion was a large character board painted to look like Lt. Uhura and Mr. Spock with the heads cut out so people could stick their heads through and have their picture taken.  Don’t ask me why DERI would have such a thing, but it was a lot of fun and offered a great deal of amusement to the public.  While I was manning this display I was engaged by a handsome young man who it turns out was an occupational therapist born in Nigeria and currently living in Ennis who asked me if I was a geek… to which I responded, “Since before you were born, young man!” He told me he was a Voyager geek who had never seen an episode of the original Star Trek (say what?!). I expressed my surprise and we talked about the virtues of all the Trek incarnations.  He told me someone had given him the entire original series on DVD for Christmas but he still had not watched any of it.  After some fast talking I think I convinced him to go home and watching those DVDs!

I missed the visit by President Michael D. Higgins but was on shift when the word came down that the Taoiseach (the Prime Minister of Ireland, pronounced tea-shock) Mr. Enda Kenny was going to visit the museum.  The volunteers ran around prepping things, picking up trash, and just generally muttering amongst ourselves for over an hour before he finally showed up.  Claude was hanging around waiting for me to get finished but stuck it out while we waited for the Taoiseach.  Once Mr. Kenny finally entered the tent, Claude’s was one of the first hands he shook.  Brendan went into teacher mode and began taking Mr. Kenny around, showing him the displays and explaining things.  All during the visit the Taoiseach was shaking hands and answering questions, listening to what people had to say.  At the end of his visit there was a photo op with the volunteers and I got my chance to shake hands with the leader of Ireland.  Very cool.

Our girls arrived on the 6^th of July and we spent the rest of Ocean Race week taking them around the city – with a visit to the Computer & Communications Museum of Ireland included. The exposure the museum got during that time has been potentially very beneficial. An email from Brendan imparted this information: “Sean Sherlock Minister of Research & Innovation said he was committed to securing funds for its long-term development; City Hall officials said they wanted it to become a major tourist attraction for Galway.” Here’s hoping it comes true!

– Cindy

Women in Technology History

DERI banner

An overview on the first day of the exhibition

Made in Ireland

 

 

 

A Sunday of Historic Cycling

I have been meaning to write this post for several days and finally have the chance to sit down and do so.  Last Sunday I went on “Off the Beaten Path” an historic cycling trip with Brendan Smith, a fellow I know from DERI.  He is a fount of knowledge about local history and Irish linguistics.  We started the tour at the Castlegar area to the North East of Galway proper.

Castle at the racetrack

Before we started Brendan talked about “Bóthar An Chóiste” (the road we were on).  It means the road of the carriage.  It seems that before the famine years (1840s) the area was very much a wetlands of the Corribe river, so much so that a raised road was built across the area so that the carriages could traverse it.  This road was called …. you guessed it, “Bóthar An Chóiste.”  Brendan went on to point out that most Irish place names are descriptive: pàircmore (parkmore) — big park, inishmore — big island,  Bóthar Na Tra — road to the beach, Na Tra (Salthill) — the beach.  He later told me that Bòthar literally means big cow path where ”Bó” means cow.  ”Bóithrín” means a smaller road like a lane or trail and seems to literally mean small cow path.

Anyway, during the famine years public works projects built dikes that reduced the water and dried up the wetlands, and today, after the building boom Celtic Tiger years, much of the area has been subdivided and built upon.  The Galway Civic Trust has been working to preserve public access to many of the historic sites and old Bóithrín in and around Galway city.

Our first stop was the castle of Castlegar itself.  Now this is not the prototypical castle that comes to the American mind at the mention of the word.  Put Buckingham right out of your mind and think more of a square tower three or four stories high, this was to be the typical form of all the castles we saw on the day.

Next to the castle is a small road (a bóithrín I suppose) that leads down to an old well.  Before the building of the dikes the castle would have been next to the wetlands and the well would have had water for drinking or washing.  When I saw it, it was a dry hole in the ground with well worn rock steps leading down into it.  While at the well we heard the family history of a local council member who said that his grandmother (or great-grandmother) traveled to the Castlegar area by boat up from Galway and that it was a large Gaeltacht.”caisleán gearr” or short castle, not due to its stature but because the owner did not live in it long.  The story, as related to me, is that Richard Burke (de Burgo), fourth Earl of Clanricarde demanded back taxes from O Flaherty and sent his son around to collect them.   O Flaherty invited the son in for dinner, said he would pay, but during the dinner the chair on which the son sat dropped him through the floor and into the dungeon where he was executed.   O Flaherty’s men then rode to Burke’s Menlo Castle where they tossed the head in a bog over the wall saying: “There are your taxes.”  Burke is then said to have built Castlegar because it was farther from the river where the O Flahertys were but then after staying a short time (one night?) he moved on to Portumna castle.

The group walking near the racetrack

When we left the well we rode over to the Galway Racecourse, which, in fine Irish tradition, is for horse racing. Our approach was also in line with fine Irish tradition as we took the paths that the locals would have taken to the course not all that long ago – though now there are several gates and fences that must be traversed.

We then rode from through the peat bogs to the castle Cloonacauneen, a nice restored castle with a restaurant.  We rested up and then headed back to “Bóthar An Chóiste” in dribs and drabs.

It was a wonderful day and I would recommend Brendan’s tours to anyone who has the chance to participate.

– Claude

St. Nicholas’ Collegiate Church

(Photo courtesy of Google search)

Today I had the great pleasure of finally venturing inside the above-named edifice due to the fact that the Galway Civic Trust is holding the Festival of Heritage this week.  Today’s tour was dubbed as a “secret history” and was conducted by a young man named Conor Riordan, who billed himself as an “astroarchaeologist and historian.”  Wikipedia has a listing for archeoastronomy, which seems like the same thing as Mr. Riordan described.  Anyway, he’s a guy who studies how ancient people viewed the skies and how that affected their lives and beliefs.

A collegiate church is one that is run by a group of ‘secular’ clergy approved by the Pope.  This church is dedicated to St. Nicholas of Myra, the patron saint of children (Santa Claus) and of seafarers – apropos considering that Galway is a port city.  It has been dated back to its dedication in the year 1320 but there is a portion of the church (the apse) that is thought to have been built and used as a small parish church as far back as the 12th century.  Conor showed us some features on the exterior of the building that lead historians to believe this origin.  The church holds and is surrounded by 450 graves and tombs, all of which are situated with the deceased’s feet pointed toward the west and head toward the east.  That’s a lot of dead folk for such a small property!  No one has been buried there since the early 20th century.  St. Nicholas is the largest medieval parish church in Ireland in continuous use as a place of worship.  It started as a Catholic church but now belongs to the Church of Ireland.  The baptismal font is over 400 years old.

The first stop was at the celtic cross that was erected as a memorial for the members of the Connaught Rangers, nicknamed “The Devil’s Own,” who had lost their lives in World War I.  The carvings on the cross originate from the Book of Kells (which is on display at the Trinity College Library in Dublin).  The regiment was populated by men from the west of Ireland, particularly Galway.  One tragic story sees a brother from one family die at the outset of the war and his elder brother die at the end.  The church displays banners from the regiment as well as flags that were carried into battle and are much worse for the wear in their present state.

Conor pointed out to us a walkway that was once dubbed the “Leper’s Gallery” because some said that’s where lepers had to stand to worship.  However, there were only two leper colonies in Galway at the time the church was built and those who suffered would never have been let inside the city walls.  It’s really just a walkway to get to the belfry.

He led us to the center of the nave, where he showed us the pillars that hold up the church.  It was pointed out that all of the pillars are round with the exception of the one on the southeast.  This one bears the shape of a cross, which some say is associated with the Masons and the Knights Templar.  There is a great deal of Mason history associated with the church; whether it is true or not is information lost to history.  However there are a number of Masonic tombs and one which is said to be that of a knight.  Conor took us outside to show us a tomb that is one of the best known examples of a Masonic burial dating back about 5 centuries.  The most famous visitor was Christopher Columbus, who stayed in Galway for a week and likely worshipped in the church in 1477.

While we were outdoors, he also took time to point out that there are only 3 clocks on the 4 sides of the belfry.  They say that the Protestants took the clock off the south facing side of the tower because most of the people living on that side of town were Catholics – the Catholics then coined the saying that they “couldn’t even give them the time of day.”

We went back indoors and looked at the Lynch transept, dedicated to the Lynch family, one of the Tribes of Galway and a very old and revered family line.  Folks believe that it was the Galway Lynches after whom the term lynching was named.  Stephen Lynch’s memorial is in the transept, but it was defiled by the Cromwellians when they took Galway and attempted to wipe out all traces of Catholicism, most tragically for the church by knocking all the heads and hands off the angels carved on the pillars and walls.  One angel managed to escape their wrath and survives to this day.

The family for whom the main town square of Galway is named, Eyre, are also memorialized and buried in the church.  It is said that Charlotte Bronte came and spent some time in Galway and had occasion to see the large memorial plaque to Jane Eyre on the wall, and thus used this name in her famed novel.  Alas, this is not likely to be true – but it sure makes for a good story!

At the end of the tour Conor took us out to the Lynch Memorial Window and imparted the story of Mayor Lynch taking justice into his hands and hanging his own son, Walter, from the window.  Once again, this story is not likely to be true, but it makes for some great storytelling – and there’s the wall to commemorate it!

St. Nicholas’ is a lovely, well-maintained old church in the heart of Galway; it is open every day of the week and people are welcome to visit.  You can purchase a trinket or hand-made piece of food inside.  Instead I left a small donation as a thanks for allowing me to spend time there.  If you ever find yourself strolling Shop Street and you find you cannot face one more moment of shopping, stop in at St. Nicholas’ Collegiate Church and indulge yourself in some fine history.

– Cindy

Here’s the link to the photos on Flickr!

50 Reasons to Visit Galway

Reblogged from Oracular Spectacular:

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1. The Spanish Arch: The Spanish Arch, built in 1584, was an extension of the Galway city wall. These days however, the Corrib-side attraction is more commonly known as a summer-time drinking spot. "Sparch-ing", as the younger generation call it, is a far better pastime than, say, going to lectures for the population of nearby NUIG.***
2. Michael D Higgins: He's an intellectual, a cultural theorist, a political scientist, a poet, a champion of social justice and human rights and now he's our President.

Read more… 3,517 more words

She didn't seem to miss anything. I would mention Connemara, and the quick access to Limerick and Donegal. -- Cindy

Random views

Just some shots that have accumulated over the last few weeks.  Enjoy!

Salthill and the Prom

 

A heron observing his statue brethren

 

Swans building their nest on the canal

 

Boats at the Claddagh Quay

 

The sign says it all...

 

This structure is a memorial to a man of the Catholic faith whose name we neglected to get - it is situated in a park in the heart of Galway very near the University Hospital

 

– Cindy

A trip through Connemara and beyond

I adore road tripping.  There’s just something about being free to move about the world at will that makes it all the more intriguing.  Plus we decided on a new dynamic of our relationship: Claude drives in Europe, I drive in the USA.  (And thank goodness for that because I’m still not used to this wrong-side-of-the-road business.)

After doing some shopping in the limited car rental market in Galway, we rented a small car (VW Polo) from Enterprise because a) they had automatics, b) they would pick us up and bring us home, and c) no fee for renting the car from the city center.  Unfortunately they failed on the automatic transmission part of the deal because they didn’t actually have one available to us on that day.  Claude was not too happy to have to learn to drive a stick left-handed on top of the already perilous conditions of having to remember to drive on the left side of the road and trying not to cause an accident on the narrow roads.  But the nice young man who picked us up assured him it wasn’t all that hard, and he was very helpful in directing us how to get to the rental office when returning the car.  I negotiated the price down, we bought the insurance, and finally we were let loose onto the streets of Galway.

The sun was shining and the streets were dry as we set out northward toward Connemara.  Connemara is a loosely defined area in the west of Ireland, encompassed by County Galway and part of County Mayo, and includes the National Park.  Much of it was once land owned by Mitchell Henry, the original owner and builder of Kylemore Castle.  It’s an incredibly interesting area of the Gaeltacht region of Ireland, filled with loughs (lakes) and bogs and small mountains, including the Twelve Pins.  A side effect of our driving understanding is that the person who doesn’t drive has to be the navigator.  The problem is that I have a not very well honed sense of direction; fortunately Claude’s is much more highly tuned.  I say I think we need to take such-and-such road and his sense of direction and orienteering skills help him decide whether or not I am right.  So I decided that we would skirt the east side of the park going up to the abbey and return home by skirting the west side.  We stopped for petrol in a place called Recess, where the main business seems to be Joyce’s Craft Shop, and the main attraction is a large stone statue of the Connemara giant (Conn of the Sea).  The plaque on the statue states that it was erected on that spot by the Craft Shop “for no apparent reason.”  It’s really cool though.

(At this point I am going to direct you, dear reader, to the Flickr set I created of a selection of our photos so that I didn’t have to use all our bandwidth on the blog to show you the sights.  I suggest you open another window or tab and direct your browser to our Connemara trip set of photos.)

The park is lovely but I imagine it’s even prettier in the summer when everything is all green and blooming.  It’s a leisurely drive up to the abbey dotted with lakes and lots and lots of sheep.  The sheep don’t seem to have much fear of the vehicles flying up the roads so we were as careful as we could be when we saw them on the road.  It is an almost surreal experience, seeing something in person that we had only seen before in movies or read about in books, especially the sheep on the road.  It only took us about an hour to get up to the abbey, and that was with us meandering and taking our time.

The approach to the castle is so idyllic as to be almost impossible to believe.  The view you encounter is this iconic image you can see just about any time you Google Kylemore Abbey but when you see it for yourself it’s pretty overwhelming.  The grounds include a Victorian walled garden that we decided to visit first.  There’s a 1 km path between the castle and the garden that takes you past interesting sculptures and a lake, with huge gnarled trees and a grotto fashioned to mirror the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes that the Benedictine nuns had constructed and use for contemplation.  One of the sculptures is a little curved wooden wall with a small door in it – I like to think that it leads off to a fairyland that only small children can enter.  I could see how, when the land was privately owned, this walk was a wonderfully peaceful approach to the tranquil beauty of the garden, an experience that must have been simply heavenly.

The castle and gardens were built between 1867 and 1861 by Mitchell Henry.  At one time the gardens contained 21 glasshouses which were used to grow exotic fruits and plants.  During the time of subsequent ownership of the castle, the gardens were left untended.  When the nuns took over the property they began to restore the gardens to their former glory.  Archaeologists came in and uncovered the foundations to the glasshouses.  Through donations of time and money the gardens are slowly being restored, as are the glasshouses, the gardener’s cottage and the undergardeners’ bothy.  Only plants that grew there in Victorian times are cultivated in the garden today.  The kitchen garden and herb garden are separated from the rest of the garden by hedgerows, as it would have been in Victorian times when the activities of the servants were screened from view of the residents of the castle and their guests.  Now there is a tea house and restaurant in which they serve the foods grown in the garden.  Just outside the walls of the garden is Diamond Hill.

Diamond Hill just beyond the walled garden

Fortune smiled upon me at this point, as there is a shuttle bus provided between the gardens and the castle.  We rode up and had a bit of lunch (courtesy of our Living Social voucher deal which bought us entry to the grounds and soup & sandwich for a terribly reasonable price of just €19), then made our way to the castle itself.  Kylemore was built, as I said, by Mitchell Henry, after visiting this beautiful area while on honeymoon, falling in love with it and purchasing a number of acres, as a gift of love for his wife Margaret.  They raised nine children together in the castle, and entertained as many as 150 guests at a time.  When Margaret died of dysentery in Egypt in 1875 Mitchell spent less and less time at the castle.  Eventually he built a chapel in which to bury Margaret and was buried there himself after his passing.  Possession of the castle changed hands a few times and was finally purchased by a group of Benedictine nuns who used the property as a girls’ school.  When the school closed the property was retained by the church but opened to the public in order to cull donations for maintaining and improving the grounds.  The nuns use the chapel for special occasions and produce soap and chocolates for sale to the public.

It is a beautiful building, well maintained and preserved, with all the wonderful accoutrements of the Victorian age still on display.  Many of the fireplaces are made of Connemara marble, and the dining and sitting rooms are still outfitted as they were when the Henry family resided there.  My mobility was too taxed by this time to walk over to the chapel and get pictures, so maybe that’s a trip for another day.

We headed west toward a little town called Letterfrack, then up toward Leenane to see one of Ireland’s 3 fjords, Killary, and the harbor there.  There’s a company that offers boat cruises up the fjord but we thought that would just take too much time and money we could use for other purposes.  As it turned out, it wasn’t all that exciting anyway – however now we can say we’ve seen at least one of Ireland’s fjords.  Back down to Letterfrack and out west toward Clifden we went, Claude braving the terrifying drive once again.

On the way up to Kylemore we had passed the Quiet Man bridge, something that is a must see when you’re in that area.  Considering that we were heading back home on the same road, we decided to watch for it and stop.  It’s just a small rock bridge, pretty unremarkable in many ways, but it’s also a part of the history of the area, made famous by the most famous film made in Connemara (and the only John Wayne film I’ve ever really liked).  It also serves as the start of the Mile Orga or Golden Mile walk, which is a goal for another day.  Apparently people find it to be good luck to press a coin into the sign and a number of coins from different countries are jammed into it.  We stopped at a nice little pub in Oughterard for some dinner; the food was not all that good but the people were very friendly so the craic was worth it.  Every once in a while I like to order a cocktail, especially when we’re in a new place, so I had yet another interesting variation of a Black Russian.  It was good.

We came back through a town called Bearna (Barna) by the sea and ended our day back in our cosy little home in Salthill.  Poor Claude’s shoulders were up around his ears!  I still marvel at the courage he has to throw himself into these totally unknown situations we often find ourselves in and yet manage to enjoy himself.

On Good Friday we struck out toward the east to go see the round tower that Claude found on Google maps a while back and has been haunting him ever since.  It is located near the Rosshill Golf Course; bring up the map, scan directly south of the little map flag until you get to the bay.  The tower, an old church and a graveyard known as the Penitent’s Station are right there.  It’s located in an area that is surrounded by privately owned land so we had to traipse across the beach to get to the wall to climb over to get to the tower… which proved to be too much for me.  Stumbling across the lumpy ground on the beach was so difficult that I had to turn back about halfway there.  Claude said it was pretty cool and took a few pictures.

Old church near round tower

Old church near round tower

Since we were on the east side of town already we decided to head over to Athenry (pronounced At-en-rye) to see the castle & priory there.  On the way we passed through Oranmore and drove in a few circles until we found a way to get to the castle there…only to find out that it’s only open in June, July & August.  We got a couple shots of the building anyway. Athenry was a walled city founded around 1250 CE and anchored by the castle.  A great deal of the medieval structures still exist in the town itself, including gates and walls, the priory and the church, along with the castle.  Entry is a mere €3 and includes a film that shows information about Athenry as well as about a number of other ancient buildings still surviving in the Gaeltacht and County Galway region.  It provided several ideas for other places that we need to visit!  We had a very nice lunch in a small bistro-type restaurant, lucky to find anything open seeing as it was a holiday.

At this point we realized that we only had time to visit one more place before heading back.  Quick-minded Claude said he thought we should go see the Turoe Stone, which was mentioned in the film at the castle in Athenry.  He recalled having read about the stone previously and that it was situated at a petting zoo.  Sure enough, we found a sign leading to the Turoe Park playland and zoo, and after one or two U-turns we made our way down the correct road and came across this amazing object surrounded by a tatty shed building in the middle of a field.  Apparently the Office of Public Works has control of the object and decided that it needed to be protected from vandals and weathering by putting the shed over it.  Unfortunately they don’t maintain the building so it is covered with splashed mud and cobwebs, pretty much obscuring a good view of the stone through the two small windows in the shed.  It was still pretty cool looking at an object that had been carved by someone who lived almost 1000 years before Christ.

The atlas that we bought for our driving trip around Ireland back in 2009 was already two years old at the time of purchase, so is by now 5 years out of date.  It doesn’t even show the proposed route for the motorway that we ended up having to take back to Galway so we could meet our timetable and get the car returned on time – another adventure in itself.  Our return home at the end of this two-day adventure was welcome!

– Cindy