Sligo and Strandhill

As much as I love Dublin, Sarah and I decided it was EXPLORATION TIME. We left Dublin on a train headed north west for Sligo, the quiet little hometown of Yeats. We arrived and headed to the railway hostel, http://www.therailway.ie/, if you ever find yourself in Sligo STAY THERE. This place was awesome, good beds, good price, around the corner from the train/bus station, free breakfast, and a lot of charm. The owner has a really cute dog as well, which is always a plus for me.

After checking in and dropping off our stuff we headed into town. It is a really small town settled on the Garavogue River. When we hit the outskirts we stumbled upon Sligo Abbey, the only medieval building left in town. It is in great condition and was fascinating to wonder around. I have a ton of pictures but put some I particularly enjoyed below:

The view when you first walk in

In the central courtyard of the friary

fun angle of the tower

After Sligo we wandered a bit more and found the river walk and followed it for a bit. At the first corner I found this sweet bench!

Look at the fishies on the bottom!



I spy I swam trying to swim against the current, do you?

After the river walk we decided to check out the Yeats house. It's a big museum dedicated to the whole family with pictures, paintings, original writings, and plenty of history. Above the house is an art gallery and we of course checked that out. A lot of the stuff in there was not my cup of tea, but everyone liking defeats the purpose in my mind. I thought this one was kinda cool and I am putting it up here for my friend Andrew, because it reminded me of him (Don't be mean...buddy).

Now one art piece I LOVED was this statue of Yeats! The entire body is imprinted with words, be it quotes or just a simple idiom. If you click on the picture you can see the detail.

Sligo is quite a small town, and we covered it pretty quickly. The town of Strandhill is about 20 minutes outside Sligo and we heard it was an amazing beach town, off we went on a bus. It was gorgeous and a nice change of scenery. I love the ocean and was at home once again!

Oh hello Atlantic!

It is just asking you to come in!



There was a giant sand dune that decided to climb



Those little specs down there are people!

Gorgeous view.

Sarah atop the sand dune


Canon by the shoreline

Groovy statue on the shoreline as well

After we hiked up the dune and strolled on the beach we still had some time to kill before our bus. So what do we do? Drink in a pub of course! There is a lovely little pub with a fun surfing stained glass.

The atmosphere at these places is awesome. They are really old buildings with odd collections of random STUFF. While I was sitting down I noticed a book binding that seemed, well, odd. I asked the bar tender for the book, and what did I find? This book, plus an example of one of the cartoons! Seriously HILARIOUS book.

After that we headed back to Sligo for the evening and had dinner at a place named Shanagins, just because of the name. The food was mneh but the name, well worth the meal. We met out two roommates at the dinner place randomly and we headed back to the hostel with them and talked to them all night. One was from Dublin and one from Israel. It is really a neat and unique opportunity to be able to talk about the same basic life experience and hear different perspectives.

After our awesome nights sleep we headed to the bus station to head down to Galway. There was this awesome mural on a wall that I wanted a picture of so badly I almost missed my bus, so enjoy it damn it!

This is getting long, so I will do Galway in a separate post, so keep your eyes peeled!