Ireland: Clifden

The next day we left Donegal and had a very long drive to Clifden. Again we saw many cool sights and took lots of pictures. Des dropped us off at our hotel, Abbeyglen Castle (the picture is at the top of this entry.) The guy at the Front Desk was pretty rude, but everyone else was nice. When the guy was bringing us to our rooms we realized that there were stairs from where the elevator let us off to where our rooms were. The guy got the owner of the Castle, Brian, and he was so embarrassed (although I don't blame him for not knowing about the wheelchair as Authentic Ireland never told him.) He kept saying he was sorry, gave us free drinks and was even going to allow my mom to smoke in the room - which was non smoking. We kept telling him that it was alright. My mom didn't smoke in the room, but it was right next to the roof so I took her there to smoke.

The hotel was really cool. It had great views of mountains and the town of Clifden. The only issue was that there was no Internet in the rooms. You had to sit in the lobby. I was sitting down there with my mom using our netbook when I heard someone say "Hey." I looked around and saw no one else around. Then I heard "Hey" again. I looked around and noticed a parrot sitting on its cage. When I went up to it he said "Hey gorgeous!" It was very funny and the parrot was the funniest thing throughout the stay.

We had dinner in the dining room and the owner, Brian, even picked up his guitar and sang some traditional Irish songs. It was pretty good. We spent 2 nights in Clifden and the whole time was really nice.

Des also took us to a local sheep farm (Jennifer Aniston had been there before when she was in Ireland making a movie.) We met the guy who owned the place and he told us all about how he raises sheep and sheep dogs - I think I was more interested with the cute sheep dogs then the sheep themselves. It was really cool to see how the sheep dogs brought the sheep down the mountain (and how the puppies tried really hard to help.) We also saw the guy shear a sheep. All in all it was a nice, inexpensive experience.