Day 8: Friday (6/14/2013)

Another day, another 24 hours of Irish sunshine.  Otherwise known as torrential rain.

We got up early to start exploring.  Frank served us a lovely breakfast, and we hit the road.

Ye olde holy fishing hut.

We started out going to Cong to see the Cong Abbey, a 12th century abbey now in very walkable ruins.  Residents of Cong have buried their dead inside for centuries--the place is a cemetery now, bisected by the main town road.

I thought the Cong Abbey was another under-hyped site in tour books.  I really enjoyed exploring it.  The abbey is surrounded by a recreational forest and the Cong river, which is a salmon fishing destination.  We saw multiple folks on shore and in boats reeling in fish all day.  The monks themselves fished so much they built a stone hut to lower nets from.  That's dedication.

The Famine Ship memorial.

From Cong we went northwest towards Connemara.  Along the way, stopped at the Coffin Ship memorial.  This monument is eerie as all hell, even in the rain.  We also looked up at Craigh Patrick, but couldn't hike it due to the buckets of rain falling down.

From there, we entered the Connemara National Park, Ireland's monument to peat bogs.  The rain and wind started coming down to the point where driving was extremely dangerous.  Mary tried to take a picture during one of our stops and got blown sideways--she was shocked.  Umbrellas were useless.

Despite the weather, I have to say I really liked the bleak, barren landscape of the peat bogs.  The hills (I know, in Ireland they're called "mountains", but... really?) reminded me of the highlands of Scotland--very forbidding and interesting landscape.  Quite a change from the Burren just a few hours south.  The bogs aren't very useful for agriculture--lots of moss and sheep.

This was a fascinating demo.  I had
no idea how spinning wheels worked
until now.

We eventually made it to the Connemarra Sheep and Wool Center in Leenaun, a kitschy--but very informative--little private museum on the Irish wool trade.  The highlight for us was learning how to card and spin wool, and (more interesting for me) how to dye it from native plants in the area.  This place isn't for everyone, but for folks like us who knew nothing about how wool yarn/cloth/etc used to be made, it was fascinating.

Our last stop of the day was the Connemarra National Park visitor center.  This free little venue has lots of interesting exhibits that taught us how bogs were formed, and why they were important.  It is safe to say we knew nothing about peat bogs until we visited this museum.  Worth your time.

Finally, we did the long drive home in time to hit Galway in rush hour in the rain.  Good times.

Dinner was at Aniar, a 1-Michelin star joint in Galway specializing in local Irish foods.  This was ridiculously good.  See my review here.

Drunk, full, and dry, we crashed hard.