Sligo

Following our time in Derry, we left early in the morning to travel over to the northwest coast of Ireland to County Sligo. Some of the stops along the way were kind of random. My professor's wife had looked up some cool locations to visit, but I didn't really gain the full significance of the sites until I returned home and researched them. I feel like this whole weekend we were super rushed for time because we were trying to see so many different things. I definitely think this was the way we should have done things, so I'm not complaining, but it was such a whirlwind!

First we stopped at the Creevykeel Court Tomb for about 15-20 minutes. I didn't even know what the name of this was until about 10 minutes ago when I looked it up. I also didn't realize from the ground how cool it looks from above! I'll post a picture of it from the Internet. When you are there it pretty much just looks like a big pile of rocks. The tomb dates back to the Neolithic period (4000-2500 BC). Apparently it is one of the oldest and biggest court tombs in Ireland.

Picture from above

Next we visited the grave of William Butler Yeats in Drumcliff, County Sligo. I was pretty excited about this because I have studied Yeats in Scotland as well as BYU and AP English. I also love extremely old graveyards. I seriously could spend hours looking at headstones in Europe. They are so cool!

After seeing Yeat's grave, we went to Glencar Lake and Waterfall, which was very fitting because it inspired Yeat's poem, "The Stolen Child." The lake was beautiful! I would have been happy just walking around the path surrounding the lake, but the waterfall was even better! Everything was so green, I just love it.

Look at those gorgeous cliffs!

This place is heaven.

Jaci and Carolyn

Carolyn and I

I love the colors in this landscape.

Glencar Falls was our last site for the day so we drove to our hostel in Sligo. It was located in the country, far away from any major cities. On the way there the sun was setting and it started to lightly rain. It was the most vibrant sunset I have ever seen in my life and the rain created multiple rainbows over the water on the lake. Hands down one of the most beautiful things I think I will ever see in my life. I wish pictures could do it justice. This is the view from the yard at our hostel.

This was the perfect end to a perfect day. The peace of the country was even more pronounced having just come from contentious cities in Northern Ireland. I think our entire group was feeling a little bit like, "What are we doing here?" when we were in Belfast and Derry. It was so tense and depressing frankly. Entering the Republic of Ireland was like a breath of fresh air. We all were feeling a bit more hopeful at this point! The only part of being in the Republic of Ireland that I didn't enjoy was that the exchange rate is worse with the Euro than the Pound. Boo exchange rates.

I didn't take any pictures of the hostel, but it was adorable. The main house had a huge kitchen and living room with lots of couches and free wifi. It was so nice to relax in a nice/newer place where I didn't feel like germs were everywhere. Seriously, some hostels are disgusting. But this one was really great! Except for...the SPIDERS. Oh my heck. I am so so so glad I was not in the main building because apparently there were a ton in the rooms there. My room was in the "guest house" next door. We had an entire building and bathroom pretty much to ourselves. I only saw a few spiders the next morning luckily. My roommates very kindly "forgot to mention" until the next day that they had checked all the beds and found some, one of which was in my bed. SO glad they did not tell me that night. Ew ew ew!