Ireland

5 May 2008

Laura and I have just been to Ireland for a week – specifically to areas around the south end of County Mayo and Galway. It was a beautiful place, and quite nice to get away.

Flying the flag

29 April 2008

Ireland was an interesting place to visit. It reminds me both of central France and California in places – I think it’s the fact that all three places have more rawness to them than the UK – the UK population density is so high that there’s not really anywhere where you get any sense of wilderness or humans only starting to make an imprint. The areas we visited, which are the least populated as they suffered the worst due to the famine in the 1800s, still had that feel. Even the road signs had a sort of ad-hoc feel to them, which I can see might be frustrating after a while, but had some charm to it.

Anyway, I can heartily recommend the areas around Westport and Connemara. Great landscapes, great food, and (as we discovered when our car needed jumpstarting…) great people. I’ll blog some more about it later, but for now you can see the pictures from the trip.