The Connemara and Visitors

After nearly a month on my own, the last few days have been quite the change. Early Tuesday afternoon, my parents arrived in Galway. They are staying in another house in Gleann Dara, which is admittedly a bit nicer than my own. As they were pretty wiped after a “long-fricken-ass travel day”, we stayed in the area for the rest of the day. They did treat me to dinner at Finnegan’s, so I was able to finally eat out for the first time since I have been here.

Wednesday ended up being a long, event-filled day for me. I had to get up at 6:00 A.M. in order to get my run in and make it over to my parents’ place in time to catch a tour bus to the Aran Islands. Due to gale-force wind advisories, we decided to postpone the Aran Island tour (which includes a ferry ride to the islands) and opted for a tour of the Connemara. As you may or may not be able to tell from the pictures, this is basically Ireland’s wild lands – one of the last “unspoilt” areas of Ireland. The tour took us through some of the Twelve Ben’s, a series of mountains that are roughly 750-850 meters high. We ended up at Kylemore Abbey before the tour made its way back to Galway. This provided some pretty cool photo-ops, but since it is still in use, we didn’t get to see much of the abbey itself.

After we got back to our neighborhood for the day, we made dinner for the three of us. At the grocery store, we decided on lamb burgers. They were unique and (at least I thought) very succulent.

Shortly following dinner at about 7:45, I received a text from Kelly, who was checking to see if he could figure out his cell phone. We weren’t expecting him at the train/bus station until about 10:30, so it was a good thing he figured his phone out because he had already arrived. After a confusing set of one-ways and no parking zones, my parents and I eventually found a place to park in an employee lot next to the train station. We couldn’t find Kelly immediately, but we eventually spotted him and made the pickup. Now, in roughly 30 hours, I went from having zero people I knew from back home to having three. It was quite the change, sure, but definitely a welcomed one.

The rest of the pictures from the day can be found here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/cjerichsen/TheConnemara