From the Air.46
Mountains.30
Village Views.70
Signs of the City.80
Anyone curious about important episodes in the history of Ireland’s long colonization by England could start with the 1607 event commemorated in the banner at the top right of this photo, the flight of the earls. This is is the lovely town center of Donegal (which for purposes of blog categorization I’ve decided is a very small city). Below are all the other photos from Donegal town itself, including a stained glass window from a church next to the castle which I believe would have been the seat of one of the two earls who departed in that French ship in 1607. Donegal is the north-westernmost county in Ireland. Historically one of the “Ulster Plantation” counties, it was not among the six counties that since 1923 have been the Irish portion of that neighboring nation-state, the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.” This visit brought home for me just how very colonized Ireland was for how very long, beginning at a time when the European powers hadn’t (yet) gotten back to emulating the Romans and forcibly taking large-scale control of large territories far from home.
Coasting.90
Assaranca (Eas a’ Ranca) Waterfall at the top; Maghera Beach at sundown just above; below a gallery with one or two shots from Glengesh Viewing Point and more of both the waterfall and the beach…and at the end, a late-afternoon-sun photos of the stunning back-road countryside we traveled through to get from Glengesh to Asaranca & Maghera.
Coasting.89
Yes, we’ve shown you this lighthouse in an earlier post :-). It’s St John’s Point Lighthouse, situated at the end of a long finger of a peninsula which drops south of the main arm of a wider and bigger peninsula which forms the north shore of a bay at the base of which sits the city of Donegal, aka Dún na nGall in Irish. To the south across the water from St John’s Point sits Mullaghmore, in County Sligo, and at the west end of the main stem of this particular part of Donegal rise the cliffs of Sliabh Liag. whose rainbow laden photos saw out 2023 on our blog.
County Views.129
Ah, Royalty.19
Mountains.29
So that’s Diamond Peak, as we saw it for the very first time upon arriving at the car park for Connemara National Park in northern County Galway. Doesn’t really look all that intimidating, does it? But let me tell you, the wind can bite pretty fiercely up there, as we learned on our stunning but indeed quite challenging and fun walk all the way up, over, and around it. Enjoy these last photos of this quite stunning location…
From the Air.39
Islands.49
Herewith all my remaining photos from Inishmore, which happen to all be from the area immediately around what’s probably the island’s most renowned historical site, Dún Aonghasa.
Village Views.69
Cill Rónáin (Killronan) is the main village on the Aran Island of Inishmore, which is the most populous of the islands. Above, the village as seen from across the bay during a walk after the driver and tour guide deposited us back in the village, after showing us the key sites of the western 2/3 of the island in a roughly 3-hour walking and driving tour of various sites I’ve shown you in prior posts. Below, a view as our ferry from Rossaveel approached the dock earlier that morning. In the gallery further down are all the other shots from various parts of the island that might give you a sense of “village” life on this lovely but remote and sparsely-populated island.
Village Views.68
These are mostly from a village I’m pretty sure is called An Spidéal (or Spiddal?), which we passed through en route from Galway city to Rossaveel, shown in the last photo and from which depart the ferries to the Aran Islands. I posted one similar entry while I was still in Ireland, but these remaining photos are so lovely, if so similar, that I hope you won’t mind a similar repeat :-).
Coasting.88
Some final images from the lovely harbor / coastal edge of Galway City, where the River Corrib (after originating more or less at the hotel whose grounds we showed you a few posts ago) meets the sea.
County Views.128
My first three nights in Ireland last November were a bit of a splurge-treat to myself and Nikos, with whom I traveled since he’s now living and working in Dublin. We stayed just outside Galway in a lovely heritage hotel, which aside from quite lovely grounds (and golf course, yes) on the edge of Lough Corrib also boasts two Pullman Dining cars from the original Orient Express train. In fact, two of the cars on which the 1974 movie Murder on the Orient Express was filmed. He took the photos of me with my cocktail (an Irish-themed drink, as I recall) at dinner our first night, before we headed over to the private theater in the main hotel (behind the dining cars, which you see in the photo above) for that evening’s screening of, you guessed it, the 1974 Murder on the Orient Express :-). Staying with my trend of working through all my unposted 2023 photos this month, I’m sharing here every remaining photo taken in and around the grounds of that lovely hotel which I’d gladly visit again, if I again find such a nice off-season deal as we enjoyed this visit.
(so much world, so little time....) 