From Westport to Galway, and the Irish beauty in between

The first two days of my Irish jaunt hadn't particularly gone on well what with my feeling rather underwhelmed with Dublin, to an extent where I was asking myself what the appeal of this country was. The first day of my trip had been amazing, in that I was having fun again with a crowd. But where's the BEAUTY???

My wish was answered this day it seems.

The day started off as usual, woke up at 7am, hardly felt I slept, had yoghurt for breakie and left by 9am. We drove for about an hour and they stopped in the middle of nowhere. We were told this was the Holy Mountain called Croagh Patrick. At first, it didnt' seem much. But as we kept climbing...and climbing... and climbing up the hill, I was just blown away by the scenery. If I thought the Isle of Skye in Scotland was the best, this easily caked it.

You can see Connemara from here, which is basically a 1000 islands. Ive never seen colours so weirdly blended before.

We spent quite a good amount of time here. I had the pleasure of meeting Kariena who works for Lufthansa Cargo. We had a good talk as we went up (and down) the hill together.

From here, a quick stop by some Pilgrim's statue, lunch break at Clifton and off we were to the dark valley and beaches of the Doolough Valley. We went for a walk round the shore. Beaches just aren't what they are supposed to be! Even this beach was so picture perfect - rocks, the greenery, all of it was perfect. We got on the bus, tired and still recovering from Monday night, Galway was a-calling!

We reached Galway by late evening. Barnacles! This hostel was much better, it was bigger and we all got 6 bunkerbed rooms instead of big dorms.

Jodi, the chattery Yank has this mate who used to work at a pub here, and she'd recommended that we go here. It was so dull. The problem this night was that everyone was forcing them  to have fun like the previous nights but it just wasn't working. We went to a pub where two stupid boys from North Carolina were playing karaoke. The night seemed to be going from bad to worse.

At one point, I just couldn't take it anymore. I headed back to the hostel by 9pm. But I wasn't the only one! The rest of the group also came  back, and we played Poker for a while before we called it a night.

As far as the day goes though, I don't think I'd ever seen scenery this consistent, this beautiful and this enchanting. Don't believe me...that's why I take pictures!