Cong Abbey

The town of Cong does have some historic ruins. The first Abbey was built in the seventh century. Although fire and war has destroyed those early structures, these ruins appear to date from the early thirteenth century and are supposed to be good examples of early gothic architecture.

And, in other news, Ireland passed the Dr. Pepper test!

Kylemore Abbey And Cong

After a wonderful Irish breakfast (I had porridge), we headed out to find Kylemore Abbey.  Unfortunately, the Irish rain gods were done being nice to us and it was pouring! My new raincoat suddenly was worth the purchase. We got a picture of the Abbey, but I wasn't interested in exploring the gardens in the rain! So this was as close as we got. 

We now were headed to the town of Cong, home of Ashford Castle and filming location for the John Wayne movie "The Quiet Man". (Nope, I haven't seen it either).  We had a bit of GPS issues as our GPS decided to send us the back way, as in the REALLY back way!!

So the little town of Cong is really proud of this 1952 movie, as evidenced by the statue and cafe. 

Good night from somewhere near Connemara

What a meal!

You have to have reservations to eat at the hotel's restaurant- it fills quickly, in fact, I made ours three weeks ago! But what a meal - it is a four course meal -and very attentive service!

Second course -- our appetizers:

And the main course, roast duck for Gordy and pork for me.  It was all amazing!

Ballynahinch Castle Hotel

We did make it to our castle/hotel -Ballynahinch Castle. Their picture is better than I could get,

We arrived early, so we took a walk around the lake - they have several nature walks.

We met two Irish moms taking their six kids out for a walk. We must have impressed them because they said they were going to tell everyone about the "two yanks" they met hiking the trail!

Roads!

Ok, so we rented a very small car.....why, you say.....because we had heard that the roads were narrow here!

We actually had some nice highways for awhile....they even had center lines! But then, we ran out of luck. You know it's bad when they don't paint lines....and staying on the left is irrelevant.

And they went downhill from there, although technically this was uphill!

We head north to Galway

We left our hotel in Limerick this morning to see the countryside. We headed our little car north....remembering to stay on the left!  My driver does a pretty good job! Please note our tiny car - this will become important later!

We headed first to Galway and stopped for coffee at a nice location on the coast.