{"id":13636,"date":"2023-08-31T23:47:02","date_gmt":"2023-09-01T06:47:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/?p=13636"},"modified":"2023-08-31T23:52:47","modified_gmt":"2023-09-01T06:52:47","slug":"connemara","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/2023\/08\/31\/connemara\/","title":{"rendered":"Connemara"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Connemara is definitely my favorite landscape in Ireland. Every bend in the road has a new lake or bog or mountain, and then suddenly you’re back on the coast looking at inlets from the sea. It’s pretty spectacular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As planned, we visited Connemara National Park yesterday and did a nice hike through hilly bogs in weather that alternated between rain and sun. Beforehand we made a short stop at Kylemore Abbey, a Benedictine Abbey that was founded on the grounds of a former castle. Our final stop for the day was the appropriately named “Sky Road”, a 14 kilometer loop that goes high up in the hills and provides some pretty spectacular views over the sea. As is customary with the pretty roads in Ireland, the road was barely wide enough for one car, which made for some interesting maneuvers whenever we came around a blind turn and met another oncoming car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those keeping score at home, so far on this trip Audrey got to pet a deer, a horse, a cat and (surprisingly) a dog. Yesterday we pulled off at a scenic stop and were mobbed by sheep (the attention was explained by a sign and box nearby: “sheep food 1 Euro”), so she added sheep to the list as well. We also encountered some ponies in a field, so add them to the list. The cows have remained standoffish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Kylemore<\/div>\n
Kylemore Abbey. I can see why someone would be tempted to become a Benedictine nun when you get to live here.<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"Sky<\/div>\n
The view from upper Sky Road in Connemara. There is an “upper” Sky Road and a “lower” Sky Road; we couldn’t come up with a single reason why any right-thinking person would take a road named “Sky Road” but then forgo the upper road for the lower road.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Connemara is definitely my favorite landscape in Ireland. Every bend in the road has a new lake or bog or mountain, and then suddenly you’re back on the coast looking at inlets from the sea. It’s pretty spectacular. As planned, we visited Connemara National Park yesterday and did a nice hike through hilly bogs … Continue reading “Connemara”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[74,75],"class_list":["post-13636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-2023-europe-trip","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13636"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13646,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13636\/revisions\/13646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}