Donegal and Carrick, Ireland – 04/29 – 04/30

(Michelle) The trip from Sligo to Donegal was about an hour. We are on the west coast of Ireland heading north. After arriving in Donegal, we walked another 1k with our bags to get to the hostel we were staying at there. This place was really more like a B&B than a hostel, other than that there was no breakfast. Linda, the owner, was very chatty. She told us a nice back road way along the river back into town. We went back into Donegal to check out Donegal Castle and Donegal Abbey. This castle was built in the 16th century by the powerful O’Donnell family. When the British took over in the 1600s, the Brooks family took it over and added onto it. The tour was very nice. The cemetery was overlooking Donegal Bay and people have been buried there for four or five hundred years… one as recently as 2006. It looked pretty full to us though. We had one beer in town, a Bulmer’s Cider. TJ said it had an after taste like Rosen’s Onion rolls. We were a little grossed out by that until we decided that we both like Rosen’s Onion rolls and then it was fine. Donegal town is only about 3,000 people and it is Sunday night, so we decided to make it an early night and headed back to the hostel. We watched “Celebrity Jigs and Reels”, which is the same thing as Dancing with the Stars, but they are Irish Celebs and they have to dance traditional Irish. We had originally headed to Donegal to get closer to Slieve’s League, which is suppose to have the highest cliff into the ocean in all of Europe. We thought we could rent bikes on Monday to get there, but we heard the road there was really hilly and we were advised against it. So we went to the tourist booth where a crazy lady (in her late 40s but with pink died bangs to go with her blond curly hair) told us that we could take the 1 o’clock bus to the “Rock”. That did not end up being true, the 1 o’clock only went as far as Killybegs. We took it anyway and then took a cab from Killybegs to Carrick. The elderly cabbie was really into being our tour guide any continuously pointed out new summer homes that were going up in the area. He was really hard to understand. Slieve’s League was about a 2 mile walk just to get to the information center from our hotel (before ascending the cliffs). The whole walk there was very scenic though, so it was nice. TJ got to talk to more sheep. Two hours later, we were on top of the world… or just on top of one of the lower cliffs. Still, it was quite a beautiful view. We decided not to continue any further due to the fact that
1) The guy at the info booth looked at us like we were mad when we asked for a map of the mountain and he also told us that after a certain point there was no path.
2) We hadn’t brought any food and we really hadn’t eaten much that day.
3) We were still looking at a potential two hour walk back to the hotel.
4) Apparently “One Man’s Walk” path is named such because only one man can walk on it an there are steep drop off’s on both sides… scary.
As we retreated, we were not looking forward to the walk back as we were getting really hungry, so we thumbed it once we got back to the road (sorry mom- but we’ve been told numerous times that hitching is quite normal here). The first car that drove by pulled over and it was a very nice Italian couple. They gladly dropped us back at the hotel and even offered to take us along with them to try and see the most northern point of Slieve’s League. If we hadn’t been so hungry, we may have taken them up on it. It turns out that in Carrick, the ONLY place to get food after 4pm is at the Chinese Take Away. That is funny. We thought we would get decent fish for dinner at one point, but that does not seem to be in the cards for us.

(TJ)
1. Celebrity Jigs and Reels beats dancing with the stars hands down. You try to be dance expressively by only moving you leg below that knee, I dare you. Also the people are much better looking on the show than in the states with those unsightly tans.
2. I don’t talk to the sheep, the sheep talk to me.
3. If you want a nice holiday home over looking the ocean, check out County Donegal, housing for $100,000.
4. The Chinese takeaway was pretty decent.
5. I will eat some fish before I leave Ireland.