Undies In Ireland

Undies, the Flying Talking Donkey, was nice enough to come over from his new home in NYC to say hi to us.
Undies is a mate of mine from my old job at Hitwise, who got a transfer to New York a year or so ago - and decided to spend a long weekend in Ireland.

I would post a photo or two from our drinking sessions on Saturday, but there aren't any good ones... we were all very drunken and had a good night... that's all i remember.

Then on sunday we decided we should probably do something touristy and go somewhere, so we headed up to Connemara, a region of Galway that is great for a drive (and for walking etc, but we had rain most of the day so mainly looked out the window).
We stopped for lunch in Clifden, the main town in Connemara, before heading off to Kylemore Abbey. This is one of the places that we still hadn't made it to, even though there are busloads of tours heading there every day... From the postcards and pictures and all that we'd seen I didn't have much interest in going to it, but considering we were fairly close, and were driving (well, Undies was driving, we still haven't driven a car in over a year) we went there.



We got there just before closing (and just before sunset) which was a good thing as there was nobody there. And it was quite stunning - the postcards don't really capture the atmosphere. Basically, it's an old castle that some rich English guy built a few hundred years ago, before it was then sold to the Irish Benedictine Nuns (whatever that means) and became an abbey. The castle is situated at the base of a mountain, right on top of a lake, with woodlands surrounding it. It's very peaceful and with the clouds covering the mountains was fantastic to look at.
Inside only a few rooms are open to the public due to the fact that nuns still use it and it's a boarding school as well.

A short walk away we came to a small church (the original guy built it for his wife when she died suddenly, what a nice man) which although very small was quite detailed and very nice.




So it's good to have another tourist site ticked off. Most of my photos didn't come out at all due to the setting sun (no idea how to take digital photos in poor light...)