Ok, it seems I only got 3 pix at a time. Hmm. Anyway, this is Kylemore Abbey. It's in a lovely setting, in County Clare?--Maybe. It's probably going to close as a girls' school soon because the old nuns are dying off. But there are pretty hills and water here, a very peaceful-feeling place.
This is a view in Donegal, in the Derryveagh Mountains. I took a tour bus from Sligo to this place, and I loved it. Donegal has never had a whole lot of human habitation, so it has a pristine feel, moreso than any place I, a citified person, have ever felt. It's beautiful if you like smaller, greener mountains, which I do. They're my preference rather than big, craggy, snow-capped ones. I'm a green-lover, and just the ferns in Donegal were spectacular. The park also has a house built by a rich guy in the 1800's, early 1900's. He was apparently a snobbish Anglo-Irish type, but the locals liked his American wife, who saw to it that the gardens were well-developed. They are still beautiful. I missed the tour of the inside of the house, but it's one of those faux-Gothic jobs, with turrets and such.
This weird area is called the Burren. It has these strange, moon-crater-like rock formations. It's limestone, but somehow water goes through it a lot so it gets all these pits in it. I believe this is also in County Clare. It's a fascinating micro-ecosystem. Because of these weird rock places, they have native plants, alpine plants, and some Mediterranean species of plants, stuck in crevices of the rocks where the temperature is warmer than tne ambiant air.
The Cliffs of Moher, another major sight in County Clare. I went there twice; the first time the weather was cold, drizzly, and windy. The second time it was warmer, windy, and only partly drizzly. The first time, though, there was a guy there playing the Celtic harp, which was really cool--very atmoshpheric.
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