Trip to Galway and around

And here is my last post for today. Actually I think we have reached the number of articles due by the end of our stay here. But I think I’ll keep posting some stuffs and mostly upload photos. Anyway!

Last Thursday I joined Louis & Charles in Galway to visit the cliffs of Moher and the Connemara National Park. They had already visited other cities before such as Belfast, Cork and Killarney. So I took a citylink coach for two and a half hours from Dublin on the Ashton quay. Before meeting in Galway we booked a guided tour for the Cliffs that began right after we arrived. The tour starts by going through the Burren where you can observe landscapes and a view on some lakes while the guide explains what we see (yeah I know, “you don’t say!”, it’s a guide’s job). At lunch time the bus stops in the coastal village of Doolin for 45 minutes before visiting the 200-metre high and 8kms long Cliffs of Moher. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t great enough to fully enjoy our visit, especially because of the mist and the fog we had that day and even if it got a little better at the end of the 2-hour stay. After this stop the tour brings you back via the coastal road to Galway and quickly stops on the seaside of the Burren where you can walk atop its “lunar like landscapes”. Don’t ask me how they came out with that comparison, I have no idea. Honestly? It’s rocks. Beautiful rocks with a nice view on the sea, sure, but just rocks. Then we stayed in Galway one night at the Kinlay Eyre Square hostel; which by the way is the cheaper and the best hostel we tried so far in Ireland.

On Friday morning we left for Letterfrack, the nearest village to the Connemara National Park. Even before arriving we saw many different types of landscapes. We also noticed that not many people are living there, and mainly those who do live there are elders. Not really surprising given the fact that the biggest village we stopped in didn’t seem to have any activity to propose for young people (cinema, swimming pool, or whatever). Once installed, we directly left to the Diamond Hill where there is a hiking pathway to the top. It took us about an hour to climb to the top and get back to the hostel. As during our trip to the cliffs, the weather wasn’t great but good enough this time to enjoy the view. If you want a tip: wear something warm with a hood because the higher you are the windier it gets (and the hill is more than 400-meter high so at the top it might look like you were in a hurricane, really). Since the weather got better around 3pm, we decided to go to the Kylemore Abbey and because there are no frequent buses in this area we walked for 2 hours… on a national road! But hey nobody got hurt, that’s the most important.

On Saturday we were supposed to hang around in Galway but we were too tired and apparently there are not many things to see there. So to quickly sum up this trip in the western Ireland:

• The weather could have been better but rainier too.

• We saw really beautiful landscapes and had fun

• From now on we hate buses (14 hours in 3 days)

Photos HERE!

Cheers!

Antonin