Ireland 2014, Part Four

As this has become a travel blog, I have just been going through my photos of a trip we took to Italy earlier this month, and I realized that I never finished logging the Ireland trip last September.

I'm going to finish this up first.

Luckily, I jotted down notes in a notebook so that I can remember what we did each day (and I'm mostly finished with the two-week trip anyway).

On September 22nd, we met Karen and Jim downstairs for the full Irish breakfast. This was served for €5, which we thought was a great deal compared to Dublin. We ate some combination of fried eggs, sausage, pudding (white only for me), beans, mushrooms, and porridge. Following breakfast, we did some shopping along the main street in Letterkenny. This included souvenirs for Donegal from the big game.

We then decided to explore some of the northern coast and the new Wild Atlantic Way. We drove toward Fanad Head peninsula. This included winding roads up toward the lighthouse and, as always in Ireland, pretty countryside.

 

We stopped to take in some of the views and came across a very friendly dog. We also saw some horses by the sea. It was just sunny and beautiful and perfect. 

There was a point here where there was a great view of the lighthouse in the distance, and the pretty scenery along the coast.

It was just a short drive further along to the lighthouse. It was quiet and peaceful there. 

We drove a short way further toward Ballyhiernan Bay and found a beach. It was very secluded and peaceful. It sort of reminded me of the imagery exercises that you can do to calm yourself, where you picture a serene scene of some sort. There were beautiful views of the North Atlantic. 

Further along, we found another sandy beach and views on Ballyhiernan Bay. 

We had some confusion finding the way back to Letterkenny, but were able to find enough road signs to make it. 

By the time we arrived back, it was almost 5pm, and we hadn't eaten since breakfast. We ate at Inis Meain, the restaurant inside Gallagher's Hotel. We seemed to be the only ones eating that early, so it was quiet and there were nice views of the town. We all ordered burgers - mine topped with bacon, aged cheddar, lettuce, and sauteed onions. 

After eating, we walked to the old cathedral and graveyard. We walked through and looked at all the gravestones. We even saw a rainbow! We were able to locate some Gallaghers buried there.

It was getting fairly dark by this point, so we walked down to Tesco. We stopped at Monarch Casino along the way so that Karen could say she'd tried a slot machine in Ireland. At Tesco, we found Gallagher's bread, so we bought some to make sandwiches for lunch the next day. We also bought a variety of Irish snackfood to bring along as we browsed the grocery store.

We walked back up the hill to the hotel and had half pints at The Central Bar before calling it a night.