Southern Ireland tour pt. 1

so im updating from this past weekend, sorry again for my slowness, its just been a busy week of school so im taking a break from irish film reviewing to update everyone :) anyway, a few of us from the study abroad group decided to book a tour on our own for this past weekend and travel to the southern and western parts of ireland. we went all the way from dublin to cong, to galway, killarney, cork, and back to dublin! for those who have no idea what that means...it equals a lot! of driving. (ps. im going to post these in three parts, one for each day so they're not all so image heavy! )

my roommate and i headed into dublin bright n' early friday morning in order to pick up our paddywagon bus. which was much to our dismay quite late but hey better late then never. there was 11 of us americans on the tour, plus two very awesome australian guys, Digby and Declan. plus two more americans from missouri, Mack and Mike, a few people from germany as well as brazil. what a combo! our bus driver was crazy! talking non-stop and driving about 100 miles per hour on some very small and windy roads haha i'm not going to lie though, it was quite fun, even as we gripped for dear life.

the one thing im going to say about the irish countryside- beautiful. it was breathtaking the great variety of scenery that lay before us. green pasters, mountains, rocky terrain, rivers, bogs, oh man the combinations were endless. and! sheep! hundreds of thousands of sheep! i was infatuated by them and quite sad when they were sparce on the 2nd and 3rd days. anyway i took more wonderful pictures then this post can hold so i'll share with you a few of my favorites and hopefully load the rest onto a flickr account i can share with you all as well for purely picture viewing :)

the quaint city of Cong (where the film "The Quiet Man" was filmed, excellent movie if you've never seen it!)

small river going through the town

alyssa climbing a massive tree, thanks to help from our aussie boys :)

aj, we were all quite adventurous with the climbing this weekend hah

shot taken out of the bus window, mainly countryside heading towards galway co.

amazing views.

the river shannon

ah.. the infamous irish rain

connomara abbey

our bus driver informed us "the best scones you'll ever eat" im not sure i was convinced, the homemade jam however took home the prize

oh those crazy european drivers!

the streets of galway, an amazing little town. so many performers and musicians, and the most beautiful colors. i actually wish we coud have stayed here longer.

the atlantic ocean, cold and windy. any americans see us waving from the other side? haha

we stayed the night in galway at a hostel on friday. after enjoying a good dinner of cod and chips and a walk along the water we watched the world cup match in a pub, had a few drinks. then some of us decided to hit the town for a few hours, complete with live cover band at one bar, and later a very interesting "american" club (think knock-off coyote ugly) where we rode a mechanical bull and danced the night away to madonna, m.j. , and some good 80's music. all in all, day and night one =success!