Oldcastle, Co. Meath
11:18pm
Well, I left off in Galway... so here's what happened after that. When we got there, our friends told us a lot of places that we could visit there in a day. I knew I had heard the city name of Cong, but I wasn't sure how I had heard it. Then, I remembered that that had been where Ashford Castle was. This castle was one of the castles I was looking at to stay in while we were there, because it had been converted into a hotel. Anyways, I'll get back to that in a second. So we woke up the next morning at our friends' house and it looked wonderful outside so we decided to go on a walk through the countryside of Galway! Our walk was absolutely amazing! Although we loved driving through the countryside, there's nothing like walking through it. You really get a sense of the atmosphere, the oldness, and the realness of the place. Ireland really felt real when we went on that walk, and as silly as it may sound, it was one of my favorite parts! I loved going on that walk! :D It was obviously so different than Dublin. It was great! We took tons of pictures, and I had a fun time with the cows in the pen on the side of the road. lol! :D They all started staring at me and walking towards me! It was hilarious! After that, we got back to our friends' house and decided that we wanted to go to Cong. I remembered that that had been where Ashford Castle, and thought it would be fun to go there, that we would maybe see some cool things along the way! So we drove to Cong, which was about 45 min from our friends house (according to Google, it took us about an hour). We didn't know the exact address for the Castle, but decided to just drive to Cong anyways. We had quite and interesting time driving to Cong. Most of the roads were really little and we even hit a little town where we got turned around and had a little bit of a scare, but our handy-dandy GPS lead us through! We were driving for a while, and still hadn't arrived at our destination when we decided to pull over because there was a line of cars behind us (we tended to drive a little slow), and when we did, BAM, we were at Ashford Castle! haha! We just drove right up to it! So that was pretty amazing! The guy had also just taken in the sign that said we had pay a fee to get in, so we got in for free, too! :D
So we drove in and seeing Ashford Castle come into view was just.... surreal. I mean, this thing was MASSIVE and really really old. It was just gorgeous. We parked the car and just walked around for a really long time. On our way in, I really wanted me and Grammy to have a picture on the Castle bridge. So I pulled this guy over and asked him to take a picture of us, and he said sure. So he took the picture, then, afterwards, he said that he was going to be doing a boat tour of Lough (lake) Corrib and going to Inchagoill (EEn-shA-geel) Island (where St. Patrick was banished). He said that there were ruins on the island from when St. Patrick was there, which immediately caught my and my Grammy's attention. We said we'd think about it, and then we continued walking on the grounds of the Castle. The grounds were absolutely beautiful. It was green and there were TREES!! And tunnels and gardens and stone stairs and willow trees and ponds and hedges and a bunch of other lovely things! It was so wonderful! :D So we wandered around for a long time, and then Grammy had to use the "toilet" (as they call it here, which seems kind of derogatory, but it's not) so we went up to the front (which looked very fancy and a little bit intimidating) and asked the man in front if we could use the toilet, upon which he lead us through the inside of this beautiful castle to the toilets. I only got to take a couple of picture of the inside, but it was so magnificent. When you stepped inside, you literally felt like you were stepping back in time. We were seriously considering staying in it by this point...
So we decided to go on the boat tour because it sounded fun and it was a relatively good price. The guy who was leading the tour was Irish (of course) and he and his brother had been working on Lough Corrib ever since they were boys. Their family lived by the lake and they knew every nook and cranny of at least the parts by Ashford Castle. Patrick (I think) was the main guy who was sailing the boat and guiding the tour. He knew so much about the history and really did a great job at recounting it all. I loved every bit of the tour and once we actually got on the island, the history was absolutely fascinating. The castle itself had been owned by the extremely wealthy Guinness family for a very long time as their winter and summer home. They would spend 2 weeks of the winter in it, and 2 weeks of the summer in it. My Grammy made a good observation when she said, "I wonder how much fun those kids had... they had full reign of the whole castle." I can't imagine what that would have been like. That would have had to have been "make-believe" PARADISE! So much fun! Many, many, MANY famous people have also stayed at Ashford Castle from the likes of King Henry IV, to Fred Astaire, to Mel Gibson and Brad Pitt, to the Reagan family! Once we got close the Inchagoill Island, he started telling us more about the Islands history. As I said, St. Patrick was banished to this island and he built a church during this time in the 5th century. This church is called "The Old Church". Then, there was another church built in the 11th Century called "The New Church" (Go figure). These ruins were soooooo pretty! And the scenery on this wild island was so gorgeous. It just looked so untouched! I loved it! We also saw the house that used to belong to the person who used to watch over the island, hired by the Guinness family. The Guinness family really cared about the things they owned, and I think that's one of the main reasons why they were so successful. They took care of the things that they owned. They had about 300 staff at Ashford while they were away, and they had a man on Inchagoill Island to watch over the ruins of these churches and makes sure that they were preserved well and were taken care of. This man lived on this island all by himself, dedicated to the care and keeping of these relics. We also saw this tall skinny stone in the graveyard of the "Old Church" that had ancient christian writings on it. This stone is the second oldest Christian inscription in the world (I believe). It was so amazing! So then we headed back and we were freezing from being in the open, cold wind of the top of the tour boat, so we sat below decks on the way back. We decided that we definitely wanted to stay in the castle that night. We were just going to splurge and go for that once in a lifetime opportunity.
When we got to our room it was absolutely spectacular! It was just a regular room, but it was so beautiful! They had peach and cream wallpaper and bedclothes, a flat screen t.v., lots of closet space, complimentary water (? haha!), and the service was impeccable. They seriously were so accommodating, and I have never been in that kind of ritzy-ness before, so it was a very new experience for me. We went down to "The Dungeon" bistro for dinner that night (the less formal one, since we were both wearing very casual clothes, and had nothing BUT the clothes on our backs) and the food was great, but I was trying so hard to be proper that I kept clanging my fork on things and flinging food. It was actually really hilarious, but I was kind of embarrassed at the time. Then, (something else I was NOT used to) we got back to our room, ready for bed, but when we opened the door, the room looked very different than the way that we left it. So different that I thought it wasn't ours, but what had happened was that the man who checked us in had made dinner reservations for us (which we knew) and then, while we were out, the maids had come and drawn the sheets for us and straightened up the room. It was so crazy! haha! Grammy and I both had a pretty hard time sleeping that night, but it still was totally worth it to stay in that castle. I mean, really... if you get a chance to stay in a castle in Ireland... do it.
So the next day we had room service breakfast and the poor man who brought the breakfast spilled some, but it was all okay. Then we "packed up our stuff" (my purse and Grammy's bag. lol!) And left to go back to our friends' house. Sadly, when we go there, they weren't home, so we didn't get to officially say goodbye to them, but they had left a nice note, and we left a nice note for them, as well. We packed up the rest of our stuff and then headed out towards Mullingar; our halfway point between Galway and Rostrevor...
And that's where I'll leave off until the next blog!
Please continue to pray for:
1. Good digestive systems
2. Good sleep
3. Grammy's doggy
4. More divine connections, even in these last few days! :)
Thank you! :)
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