Connemara

So our first Irish studies trip was to the hills of Connemara. In this class, we have lecture every Friday morning, and then in the afternoon we go on a field trip! Connemara, which is in Co. Galway, north of Ballyvaughan, was beautiful! The hills are so crazy and majestic looking - it makes it very hard to remember that Ireland is a rather small island, when it contains an area so impressively huge. I don't know if it looks like this all the time, but the grasses and bogs of the Connemara lowlands/valleys, combined with the tons of overground streams (due to a different kind of bedrock that the water can't penetrate).... it looks a whole lot like Rohan. It was very exciting. Unfortunately, we were on the bus through all of the Rohan part, so I didn't get any good photos to show.



Some of the hills, right after a rainstorm



Same place, about five minutes later - the weather changes so quickly here!!

Kylemore Abbey - it was originally built for a nobleman's wife, but she died while traveling in Egypt.



The first of two beaches we traveled to. It was so nice to explore a good beach - and the ocean was lovely!



The "sand" here was really coarse - and made of little skeletons. I don't think they were actually coral, but some sort of marine life.



The second beach we went to - it's a beautiful crescent. And the sand here was really fine and very white. The air was so clear, it didn't feel quite real.



Some lichen that we found on rocks. Apparently it's used for dye quite often. Liz gathered some, and has since made a dye out of it. I'm going to use a little bit on a piece of wool that I found snagged on some grass.

These rocks were positioned by humans at some point in the past - possibly as a marker for a direction or path.

Scattered around the area were all these small stones surrounded by empty shells. Apparently birds find these stones, and use them to open the shells.

This robin was sitting on a fence on our walk back to the bus. He wasn't bothered by us at all, and we were able to get ridiculously close - probably about two or three feet!!