Emerald Isle tour -day 1 ( Galway and Connemara)

We were ready in time for our pick up this morning.
There are 12 people on our tour- and 8 of them come from the same family! They come from Ohio and seem very friendly. Most of them work together in the family company- which manufactures plastic products for sports shooters.
We have two single females-one from NZ and one from Brussels.

First stop was an Irish whiskey distillery (the Kilbeggan distillery).
Quite interesting with a water wheel which used to , and still does sometimes, drive the workings.

Then on to Galway where we had some free time to have a look around.
Galway is on the stony  river (now called the Carb). Our driver Sean has been great at filling us in on a bit of history.

Galway has an old wall (not much remains) but we did see the old Spanish Arch.

Galway is also home to the claddagh  ring,  so we had a bit of a look in the original jewelers (Dooleys?) at their exhibition.

1757 version of a claddagh ring

When the tide is in,  they have to put up a barrier on the side of the river to stop people from walking into the river when it floods!

They also have the longest continuously operating church. The St Nicholas church is said to be one of the places that Christopher Columbus worshipped before he discovered America!!

They had some very old stone work, stained glass windows and memorials.

I loved these very detailed epitaphs.

Even some of the gravestones had claddagh on them!

Then we headed out into the Connemara area - through the beautiful green hills and valleys and bog areas via Aughanure Castle ( not lived in)

And then Kylemore Abbey-which looked beautiful standing by the water with the mountains behind it cloud capped. 

Sorry-the Internet connection here is really bad... so that's all the pics for tonight. 

We are staying in a castle ( sort of ) tonight. Hopefully connection will be better tomorrow.