Leenane Hotel

... town of Castlebar and into Newport where we stopped at Kelly’s Kitchen for lunch. Breakfast was still being served, so we had omelets and tea. We met a young priest who had gotten his Master’s degree at Fordham and he wished us safe journey when he left.

We drove on until we crossed the bridge to Achill (ACK-ill) Island. On our way to the information center we saw a sign for the Atlantic Drive and took that instead. We drove through little towns and on ...

... at some point and make it all the way to the peak.

When we got down we stopped at the Irish Famine Memorial which was really interesting. It is a large metal ship, but its covered with skeletons in memory of all the people who died on "the coffin ships" when they were emigrating out of Ireland. It was a pretty moving sight and I am glad that we stopped there....

Alot of these pictures have the same title, but they are different

... the group. Ours was simple, but we were very proud of it. It definitely will not stand the test of time, but we know it was there.

We drove into the town of Ballyvaughn and had lunch at a coffee shop on the main street--more soup and brown bread. We stretched our legs a bit and then got in the car for the final leg to Galway with a quick stop for a picture at Dunghaire Castle.

Susan Daly had called a friend who ...

2nd on our list was Turlough Park,

This was a place where we got to see how landlords lived in the 19th century while taxing their people into poverty. This one was a bit different than most English landlords because this house belonged to the Fitzgerald family who were Irish. They were removed by the english from their home in wexford Ireland where they held 70,000 acres of great land and moved to ...

1st stop Ballintubber Abbey...

This Abbey has been around for a while to say the least....It is here that St. Patrick baptized the people of the area in 441 A.D.. There is a bit of lore to how it came to be
in the modern state it is now. It was said that the clergy of the church took in the prince of Turloch because he was fleeing the vengeance of Turloch's queen who wanted her own son to sit the throne. The clergy of the ...

... The water was delightfully misty and mysterious. We did get a wonderful view of the castle from the water too. The water was rough so we did not stay out long. Everyone enjoyed the stories of the lake and the castle, the spirits served by Jack and the accordion music supplied by Martin.We had dinner in the bar and then enjoyed piano and singing in the drawing room in the evening.
The next day dawned fairly clear so we ...

... a few other guests here. For some reason, all of the staff (which outnumbers the 3-4 guests about 8:1) speak French and broken English. Fairly odd in the middle of the Irish countryside. I tried to ask the friendly receptionist some advice about what to see in France, and he told me about the weather in Ireland. Huh? Oh well. I guess it is only preparing us for our journey to Paris in a few days. Once we got situated in the ...

... muddy bogs but once we reached the mountain the ground started to dry up. The weather was perfect when you were in the sun but once you walked into the shade it was freezing. Finally when coming down the mountain we ran into some horses and donkeys. Heading to Scotland soon!

... attempt to find a park to eat our lunch, this time in Galway, we continued on northwards through the Connemarra Mountains. Of all the Irish landscapes we had taken in on this road-trip, the coastline of County Mayo was to me at once the most dramatic and pathetic. In parts the countryside solely comprised of fields of grey rocks, each one fenced by dry walls built from same kind of rock, running right down from the ...

... build without any morter of mud...it's quite an art to build them...then if they want to move their animals from one field to another they just knock down part of the wall...let them thru...then rebuild the wall again. As we drove thru the boggy areas the bus driver told us that these areas were home to many Irish who died in the potato famine in the 1840's. It's no wonder...the land is so ...