A Million Shades of Green and Grey.

I feel like I should apologize for all the landscape photos in my posts, except it would sound something like, "I'm sorry, it's just so incredibly beautiful here and I can't stop wanting to capture nature in all its glory," which isn't really an apology, and in fact you can definitely expect more of the same for the next month or so. But seriously, how gorgeous is Ireland?! 


Last Saturday Noémie and I went on another roadtrip, this time to Sligo. Sligo's only about an hour and a half from Killala, but being adventurous we took everything but the main route to get there. We drove out on random "roads" (paths that happened to be wide enough to fit a car) looking for ocean. At one point we were driving along and spotted what looked like a crumbling tower. We took the next road and sure enough some ruin was slowly and forlornly weathering away. We climbed through the front door (not very difficult as you can see) and spent several creepy minutes inside.


On a side note, this kind of activity of finding some random yet exquisitely preserved and completely ignored monument just chilling in the Irish countryside is very common. I've asked Morag about this phenomenon, and she said that County Mayo is especially horrible at paying any attention to its history. These gorgeous and ancient buildings are given the minimum amount of safety precautions and then let alone. On one hand this is AWESOME because the 12-year-old inside of me freaks out at being able to fully explore a 600 year old abbey or an ancient watch tower no holes barred. On the other hand, I often wish there was some sort of plack or something letting me know a little about the building I'm crawling over. Still, it's very very cool.


Sligo was adorable and we got to watch some crazy people try to maneuver some midget kayaks up the river that ran through the town. We also drove out to Strandhill, a small village just south of Sligo.  We conquered a giant sand dune and were rewarded with spectacular views. Right around the bend was Connemara, home of some prehistoric tombs. Since it was off season, I described the site as "closed", but Noémie described it as "free" so we hopped the fence and had a look around. Our delinquency was rewarded with spectacular views... of what looked like piles of rocks. Oh well.


We drove back through the country and stopped by the lovely Lake Talt. Our day finally ended with a photoshoot I've been meaning to have in a beautiful cemetery I pass every day on the way to Ballina. In the last photo, everything about that statue was perfect (including carved buttons on his waistcoat) except for his face. Creepy, right?


P.S. Can you handle the cuteness of those cats we made friends with in Easky?! Because we couldn't. Especially me. I was barely able to hold it together long enough to take that photo.