I have to catch up on the wonderful weekend trip we had last weekend with my parents in the west of Ireland! I think my last post was a bit of a downer, but I’m just trying to capture all the ups and downs of this experience. And unfortunately I spoke too soon in my last post about Isaac’s foot — we went back to the doctor today and it turns out they do think it has a minor fracture, so now he’s in a cast. 😦 Hopefully it should only be on for a few weeks and then it will be all healed. But aside from Isaac’s injury, our weekend trip was wonderful and for now I’ll share some of the amazing things we saw on our trip last weekend!

So we wanted to go on some kind of trip in the countryside with my parents, but none of us really wanted to drive. Maybe eventually I’ll attempt driving here, but wasn’t ready quite yet. We tried to figure out somewhere we could go and hire a driver and see a bunch of sites, and we settled on Galway as our base.

Galway is a city on the west coast of Ireland (Dublin is on the east coast), and it’s about a 2.5 hr train ride from Dublin. It’s got a university and a third of the population is students, so it’s got a young, vibrant college town feel to it. The other cool thing is it’s a pretty compact city (at least the center), so we could walk around it in about 15 minutes. It’s also a city known for festivals all summer long: film festival, oyster festival, boat festival, you name it.

We arrived Friday afternoon after taking the train (which Isaac loved) and went exploring. Our hotel was right by Eyre Square, which is a main town square with grass where people chill out on sunny days. It was raining so not many people chilling at that time. We walked down the main pedestrian mall and saw lots of cute cafes, shops, and pubs, many decorated in bright colors. In fact, many of the towns in the west (Clifden and Cong were two others we stopped in) have bright colorful buildings. This is meant to bring some cheer during the ever present rain and clouds 🙂

As we walked through Galway, it was off and on raining and windy, so we kind of went from indoor place to indoor place. Had a bite of lunch at a delicious wood fire pizza place called Dough Boys. My dad popped into a shop selling traditional Irish caps and got matching ones for him and Isaac. So cute! There was also a children’s festival happening in Galway that weekend and we attempted to stand in line for a cool exhibit (it was sort of like a large inflatable structure you could walk through with all kinds of lights), but it started lashing (pouring) rain again so we abandoned that plan and escaped into a cafe to warm up with some coffee!

Then, we decided to go hear some traditional Irish music (trad), which Galway also has in abundance. The musicians we heard were pretty mellow and just played their instruments (no singing), unlike the guys we had heard playing in Temple Bar. But we still danced around and had a lot of fun. And of course there was an old drunk man trying to make the band play music he could sing along to off-key. They went along with it for a few minutes and then went back to their own music (in between stopping for breaks to drink their own pints). We also heard people speaking Irish in the pub. Galway is near several Gaeltacht regions, which are areas where Irish is the first language.

Saturday we met up with our driver, Pat, who would be touring us around in his van taxi. There are lots of big tour groups and buses you can get from Galway to the surrounding countryside, but with the two kiddos, we felt they’d do better with the flexibility of our own small tour. That way we could stop and take breaks or adjust the itinerary as much as needed.

On Saturday, we drove all around county Clare, through small villages and past rolling hills and along the ocean. But the most unique aspect of County Clare is the Burren, which literally means “rocky place.” It’s a limestone plateau covered with rocks. It looks very barren at first glance, but it’s actually got a unique ecosystem of flora that has adapted since the last ice age 10,000 years ago. But one of the most interesting things about the Burren were the Iron Age stone forts (ring wall) and the ancient portal tombs. We saw the tomb of Poulnabrone Dolmen, which looks like a stone table sitting in the middle of a big rocky field. These tombs are older than the pyramids!

A few other things that stood out from driving around County Clare: the penny walls built up along many of the hills. These were a project during the Great Famine in the 1800s as a way for people to earn a small amount (a penny) for a little bit of work. Kind of like the WPA during the Great Depression. We also saw a few thatched roof cottages, and supposedly each roof is a little different with its own signature design, kind of like the signature of the builder. We saw a ring fort — an ancient wall built in a forest grove that protected the dwellings inside it. In the center of the grove is a fairy tree, where people believed fairies lived and if you tied a ribbon or cloth or penny or something to it, it was supposed to be good luck. We drove through the town of Lahinch, right on the ocean and a surfer’s paradise — huge waves! I had no idea there were big surfing towns in ireland. We also passed through a town called Lisdoonverna, which has a history of a matchmaking festival held there for hundreds of years and still to this day.

But the “crown jewel” of County Clare (and some argue of Ireland) are the Cliffs of Moher. They are huge spectacular cliffs that seem to rise straight out of the Atlantic. From O’brien tower on them, on a clear day you can see as far south as Kerry and north to Connemara. The tower looks like an ancient castle perched on the cliffs, but was actually built in the 1830s. But anyway the cliffs were really amazing. Unfortunately after we had seen the cliffs, on the way back to the parking lot is where Isaac and my dad took their tumble, so our ending to the cliffs was a bit tarnished, but it still remains a gorgeous place to visit (Isaac says he never wants to go back though :))

Sunday we got ready again for another day of touring with Pat, this time around Connemara and county Mayo. The scenery we saw Sunday was so different from Saturday. The Connemara is a wild, rugged landscape with hills and fields covered in red and brown grasses( I think a lot of heather) and dark turf (the bog) which is dried and used to burn for fuel. There are mountains too (the twelve Bens) that you can hike. The Connemara also borders the ocean, so we drove along a road called the sky road which overlooked the water and had some incredible views. You felt like you were on top of the world.

A few things that stood out from that day were: the town of Clifden with its colorful storefronts. It’s home to the Connemara pony festival (apparently this is a famous breed of pony), and was also where Alcock and Brown, the first aviators to cross the Atlantic, landed on their flight from Newfoundland. If you read Colum McCann’s book Transatlantic, you can get great history about this (and other aspects of recent Irish history).

Kylemore Abbey is another spot that stood out. It’s a gorgeous Neo-gothic country house originally built by an English businessman in the 1860s and later turned into a convent and boarding school by nuns. It ran as a prestigious girls boarding school until 2010, with wealthy families from all over the world sending their daughters there.

We drove along all kinds of rolling hills in the middle of nowhere and everywhere you looked you saw sheep, sheep, and more sheep! Sheep in the fields, on the hillsides, in the roads. It’s probably what you picture when you imagine the Irish countryside. And oddly, most of the sheep are painted — usually blue or red. We learned this is to identify which sheep belong to which farmer in the area, because they all sort of roam freely so there needs to be a method of identification.

We saw a few huge lakes (loughs), one of which has over 300 little islands in it. We even saw Ireland’s only fjord!

Driving through the Connemara and then into county Mayo was just really unique. Every corner you turned was a slightly different view and depending on how the light changed (like if the sun came out from behind the clouds or was hidden or if it was drizzling or pouring…and the weather changed frequently), the scenery would look different from moment to moment.

We ended our day back in Galway and got ready to take the train back to Dublin. It was a full, busy, and drama-filled weekend, but one filled with spectacular sites we won’t soon forget, and great family time.

Now that I’ve caught up on last weekend, it’s onto Scotland for the weekend tomorrow! More to come about that!

Ps, I apologize for all the sheep pictures — just trying to capture how abundant they were!