The Logan's

On Saturday, the 14th, we went to The Giant's Causeway. By this time, we were super tired of walking, so when there was a bus to get down to the causeway, we gladly paid the fee to use it. :0)

The Giant's Causeway is an area of interlocking basalt columns caused by a volcanic eruption. Most of the columns are a hexagon, but some have fewer or more sides. It is really interesting to see how uniform the columns are and that they are not man-made, but caused by nature.

It is called The Giant's Causeway because of the legend that the columns are the remains of a causeway (a road built over a body of water) built by a giant named Finn MacCool.

There is also a "Wishing Chair" that was made for Finn when he was a child. If you sit on the chair and make a wish, your wish will come true!
This is where we thought the wishing chair was.....

Then after we all took our pictures in it, and Kathleen had started to climb back down, Jeff realized that it was actually on the other side in a precarious spot. Kathleen did not feel the need to climb back up, but Jeff & I went over to it and took our pictures & I know I made a wish. :0)

Jeff was like a little boy, climbing all over the place! :0)

This is supposed to be the giant's organ:

And this is one of the giant's boots:

These flowers are all over the place and I thought they were pretty!

After the causeway, we went to The Dark Hedges. I had seen pictures of the dark hedges & I was super excited to see them, until we actually saw them. Then I was a little disappointed. :0(

They were still pretty, but not what I had envisioned in my head. Oh well. If that was my only disappointment for Ireland, then I'll take it. :0)

We ate lunch in Belfast, then headed back to Dublin.

The last hotel we stayed in was The Red Cow Inn. It was very comfy and had a steak house & bar attached, so that was nice.

Here is a map of Ireland that Jeff drew our driving path on. As you can see, we went clear around the country!! We started at Dublin (pointed out in green) and ended back in Dublin.

We were originally going to go to mass on Sunday in an old Catholic church, but were so tired that we decided to go to the closest church to the hotel (which was fairly new) on Saturday night and sleep in on Sunday. I am not sorry about this decision. I liked sleeping in after a week of go, go, go. :0)
The last post will be about our last day in Dublin. More fun ahead!!

On Day 5 of our trip, we left Clare to go see The Cliffs of Moher. We got there right when the park opened. I am really glad about this for two reasons. One, when we got there we were the only ones of a handful of people who were there already, so it wasn't crowded at all, and two, within 20 minutes, it was SO foggy, you could barely see anything!! We got to see them for a little while though, so that is good!

See how foggy it was getting??

On the way back down from the cliffs, we saw these clovers.

Some of the clovers were huge!! I never saw a four leaf one though. :0(

It was still pretty foggy, even after we left the cliffs:

We needed to stop for gas again, so we stopped in this little town (I can't remember the name) for gas & lunch. While we were there, I saw a café called Puddleducks. My dad calls the grandkids puddleducks sometimes, so I thought it was funny. :0) (Coincidently, my dad is where I get my Irish from!)

This town was also the town where a lot of the movie, The Quiet Man with John Wayne & Maureen O'Hara, was filmed. They had a Quiet Man café there.

After getting lunch, (and more butter cookies, those things were delicious!!!) we started towards Kylemore Abbey. This is just scenery on our way there:

Kylemore Abbey:

It is just gorgeous! I love how it is set across the lake and all of the grounds are beautiful. It's like something out of a fairytale! If I had a full staff inside & out, I could definitely live here. ;0)

You could tour part of the inside. It was originally a castle (more on that in a bit), then turned into an abbey & school. The last graduate of the school was in 2000. Nuns still live there & they make chocolates & soaps to sell in the gift shop. We bought some of the chocolates & they were yummy!! :0)

This is Margaret Henry. The house was originally built for her by her husband, Mitchell. They were on their honeymoon in Connemara and fell in love with the spot. When he came into money from his father, he built Kylemore Castle for his beloved wife and their growing family. When Margaret was only 45, she died of Dysentery while on vacation in Egypt. Mitchell brought her back to Kylemore and built a mausoleum for her that is still there today.

In 1903, Mitchell sold it to the Duke & Duchess of Manchester. (The duchess's father actually purchased it for them.) The Duke was apparently a gambler, and a bad one at that, because he lost the estate in a card game a few years later.
It was then turned into Kylemore Abbey.
This was the only castle that had this much history up about it that you could read. I wished that other places had this much history out in it.

A little further down the pathway is the church that was built on the site by the Henry's.

The pathway to the church and then onto the mausoleum was beautiful.

I didn't take a picture of the mausoleum. It just seemed disrespectful for some reason. Which is weird because I had taken pictures of other grave sites. Maybe because I had read so much about Margaret?

We walked back toward the front of the property using a different path & I got this good look at the church:

After we left there, we went to Croagh Patrick which is a holy mountain.
Halfway up the mountain is a statue of St. Patrick. Halfway to that, this was me:

Halfway up was really far!! (and super steep!!)
We finally made it!!!

There were several people there and they were trying to have some sort of singing and service, and they were upset that other people were there. You know, how dare other people come to this completely public place!! ;0)

You could walk the rest of the way up the mountain, but we chose not to.
So, we started back down.

Not back down yet.....

At the bottom of this, we were done. ;0)

I wanted to walk through one of the little towns we had been driving through and go through some shops, so we headed to the next town.
Here is Jeff driving:

Here are Kathleen & I riding:

Exciting, isn't it?!? ;0)

We ended up in Westport. It was a cute little town, and we wandered around their town square.

After Westport, we went to Donegal to check into our bed & breakfast; Haven Guest House & Spa. This was the cutest place ever!!

This was the key to our room!! (no electronic card!)

Funny thing about this place though, there was no actual shower. There was a showerhead, but no enclosed area or even a curtain. Just a sink, toilet, and a showerhead on the wall. Weird!