Day 11 Galway, Connemara and Kylemore Abbey: September 9

Radisson Blu - our hotel in Galway for two nights.
Clockwise, l to r: hotel lobby, hotel patio, our room amenities!

We arrived at our hotel in Galway, the Radisson Blu, the previous evening. At dinner the waitstaff placed our napkins on our laps - the first time I've ever eaten with such luxury! The hotel was lovely, not that we cared that much about fancy accommodations, but this was a really nice hotel and we were here for two nights. That meant a day to sleep in a bit, always welcome during this whirlwind tour!

Based on my sketchy notes and the order of my pictures, I believe we switched around the planned itinerary to drive out to Connemara first and then do a walking tour of Galway at the end of the afternoon. Whatever it was, we did do both, along with a tour of Kylemore Abbey and Connemara Marble.

We saw this lovely thatched roof cottage on our trip out to Connemara.

One of the reasons we chose this particular CIE tour was because I wanted to see Connemara country. Our daughter owned a horse that was a registered Connemara, but was a Thoroughbred cross. Both Katie and I became interested in the Connemara breed and Erin Go Bragh, "the little horse that could." I wanted to see the land where these ponies came from, and I had hopes of seeing some of the wild Connemara ponies.

Floors in rest stop made of wood and Connemara marble.

Our first stop was supposed to be Connemara Marble, but another tour bus had just stopped there so our driver chose to move on. Based on similar photos (see above) on Trip Advisor and spending some time on street view in Google Maps, I've decided the rest stop we did take was at Peacocke's Hotel. There was a beautiful gift shop with lovely gifts. Of course, not much time to shop! Our driver was still in the gift shop when I walked out to the bus to find one of our usually very quiet fellow tourists in the driver seat, and I'm not referring to the leprechaun!

As we entered Connemara country, I kept my eyes peeled for Connemara ponies. Our bus driver was telling one of his stories when I spotted some cars pulled off the road and people taking pictures. The bus driver didn't hear me shout out "ponies," so I tried to snap quick pictures on the move with no slowing down. I'd like to think these were the wild ponies of Connemara. Hard to know for sure, but, I got one quick picture. This picture is actually better than one we took of the one pony we saw on Chincoteague several years ago!

May be a Connemara wild pony. May be someone's horse that has free rein of the countryside.

Throughout the countryside we saw what had become a familiar landscape, hills, valleys, heather, rocks and sheep. This time we were educated on peat and how it is collected as we passed peatland and piles of peat set out to dry. Peat is still a source of fuel in Ireland, Scotland, and some other countries. Peat can be clean-burning, efficient and renewable fuel. But, like other fuel, there is controversy.  If this is of interest, there is a great deal of information about peat here.  It does have a distinct smell when burning that I first noticed in a shop in Scotland, and then recognized at other stops on our trip.

Peat drying

Peat is harvested from peatlands, or bogs, or mires, by cutting down through the layer of sod, which can be anywhere from one to twenty-five feet deep (according to our tour guide). Most of the harvested areas we saw seemed to be about two feet in depth. After it is cut from the ground, the sod is then stacked to dry, as shown in the picture above. The following picture shows people gathering the dried peat and putting it in bags. The cut in the ground, pictured below, is most likely a drainage ditch, though the cuts for harvesting look very similar.

Dried peat being bagged

Kylemore Abbey was our next stop with options: bathroom (of course), lunch (paid for with the tour, so not going to skip this one), touring the inside of the abbey, or seeing the gardens. This time we took pictures of our lunch (see below). It didn't occur to us to take a dessert to go - lesson learned for next trip!

It wasn't always easy to get green salads, but this place
had a quiche/salad combo. Salmon quiche? Very good. And, huge desserts!

After lunch, outdoor people that we are, we opted for the gardens instead of the inside of the abbey. There was barely time to see the gardens, but we took the shuttle up, and did a quick walk through. Entering the walled garden felt like entering a fairyland. The gardens are immaculately organized, trimmed and beautiful. We wandered around for the whole ten minutes we had left, and then rushed to catch the shuttle back to the bus.

Kylemore Abbey. Madonna's daughter went to school here. 

On our way back we made the stop at Connemara Marble where we were shown all the different varieties of marble and the process for cutting out cylindrical shapes that are then cut and shaped for jewelry. Beautiful jewelry that was, of course, for sale when we left the show-and-tell area.

The picture on the bottom left shows the cylinders cut from the slab of marble.

Our walking tour of Galway was next. Or, I think it was. We may have done that before we went to Connemara, but the dates and times on our pictures indicate it was late in the afternoon when we toured Galway. I had absolutely no memory of this tour until I looked through pictures. The pictures brought back vague memories of being shown old buildings, and, I now remember going into St. Nicholas' Collegiate Church. The local tour guide shared a lot of history and stories connected with the church, one about a woman named Jane Eyre who is buried in the church. The story is that Charlotte Bronte spent time here and based her book on this Jane. As our bus driver/tour guide would say "believe it, or believe it not!" More info about Galway here and about St. Nicholas' Church here.

That evening we were on our own for dinner. After a nap, we decided to try to find a pub for some live music, dinner and a drink. Interestingly, most of the live music doesn't start until around 9 or 10 o'clock. With bags out by 7 the next day, that would keep us up way past our bedtime! But, we did find a pub with music that started earlier, had a Guinness and a salad and heard a bit of Irish music. 

Surprises/Cool stuff:

• Claddagh is a city across River Corrib from Galway. Our bus driver/tour guide told us the legend of the Claddagh Ring and pointed out the shop pictured below as the original Claddagh jeweler's shop, still in business.