Today we drove through the Blue
Stack Mountains into the Glenveagh National Park. Once again, it was an ‘adventurous’ one-hour drive. Alan said I had one hand white knuckling my
seat and the other white knuckling the roadmap. But the drive there was beautiful
[Donegal countryside]
Once we arrived at the National Park, we hiked a beautiful 5K along the water.
The views were breathtaking (total understatement, the pictures don’t
even capture it). We even stopped into the
Glenveagh Castle. We’ve been visiting a
lot of castles, and I’d been wanting to do an official guided tour, so we did
one here. As we waited for our tour
time, we walked around the immaculate gardens.
I’ve gotten quite a bit of outdoor space inspiration on this trip. When the time comes (i.e., I have a
backyard), I may consider designing a European vegetable & flower
garden. On the castle tour, we learned
bits and pieces of historical info. The
castle doesn’t stand on a major waterway, and was actually built as a hunting
lodge. It sits on thousands of acres of
land, and holds the largest herd of red deer.
We weren’t allowed to take pictures on the castle tour, but the interior
has a very lodge-y inspired elements, such as large bronze buck heads in the
entryway and plaid wallpaper in the music room.
Most recently the castle was a ‘summer home’ (seriously, are you kidding?) for an American
from Philly (professor from Harvard, who had a wealthy family background). We learned fun things along the way too, like
– the most previous owner had a glass canister that was filled every
morning….with 9 liters of Jameson! The American
donated castle to the country of Ireland in 1983. However, there were two stipulations 1) it
remains open for the public to enjoy and 2) all his staff kept their jobs for
as long as they wanted to work there.
[Glenveagh National Park]
[Glenveagh National Park]
[Glenveagh National Park]
[Glenveagh Castle]
[Glenveagh Castle]
[Glenveagh National Park - my favorite view from the day]
We hit ‘downtown’ Donegal Town for
dinner at The Harbour Restaurant. It was
a mere 2 streets. We ate at an amazing
restaurant (thank you, Trip Advisor!). I
said it was the best meal yet. Donegal
is a fishing village, so naturally we ordered seafood. Our crab claws put Joe’s Crab House in
Chicago to SHAME (claimed best seafood in the city). We wandered around downtown for a little
longer. I ordered a Guinness, since many
people told me it would be served warm in the north. It was cold.
And Donegal is about as far north as you can get in this country! Perhaps times have changed J
[Pub that we visited tonight]
[Donegal Town, Ireland]
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