Madonna was definitely wrong... Majorca? Spanish Lullaby? C'mon! The real isla bonita is Ireland. That's what I've realized this weekend. Finally someone decided to plan a touristic trip to Galway, Connemara and Wesport. We couldn't miss it...
Our bus left to Galway on Friday at 3 pm. It took us around five hours to get there, so it was quite late when we arrived and we only saw Galway at night. The hotel in which we stayed, near the bus station, was the perfect place to socialise. When we were preparing dinner in the kitchen, we talked to some nice guys from New York. Besides, Lola and I shared a room with two guys we didn't know. One was a Polish guy named Bart, but we didn't talked much with him because he was all the time trying to sleep. The other one was a weird, half Southafrican half French guitarist who even gave us his e-mail so that we could meet again. After dinner, we went to a very Irish pub with live music (not celtic though ) for a while. I had to kill many people to get a Kopparberg, but it was worth it.
The next day, after breakfast, we took another bus to visit the Connemara National Park, one of the most striking and beautiful landscapes I've ever seen. I won't describe it, because I have something better: pics.

This is the sight from the mountain where we went hiking. It was exhausting, but the sight was brilliant. The worst thing was the way down the mountain... I didn't know I had so much vertigo. If Lola and Cécile hadn't helped me, I would probably still be on the top.
After those long 4km, we went to Letterfrack, a small town near the park with a dark history. The famous Industrial School of Letterfrack used to be run by the Christian Brothers, a religious group that tended to abuse students and use corporal punishment against them. In fact, there is a cemetery where many of the boys are buried, but local people don't want to talk about it.
While we were waiting for the bus to go back to Galway, we went for a drink. We discovered that old Irish people are really friendly and talkative with people they don't know -especially when they are a bit drunk. Finally we took the bus, picked up our stuff in Galway and took another bus to Westport.

We arrived in this lovely town around 9 pm. It was freezing, so the first thing we did was to go to the hostel: The Old Mill Holiday Hostel. It turned out to be quite a peculiar place (I have some pics to illustrate it). The receptionist was fun and told us everything we needed to know about the hostel and the city... and we understood her! I can't believe it! We managed to understand an Irish girl! This is what our room looked like:

There were seven beds in the same room. It was like living in a farm, but it was quite clean and the place was nice. We had some pizzas for dinner in the kitchen and then we went out, but we didn't choose the right pub. The average age must have been around 35, there was no live music and no-one danced.
On Sunday we went hiking again, but unfortunately we weren't so lucky with the unpredictable, crazy Irish weather. During our visit to Craogh Patrick it was so windy that we thought we were going to fall. That's why some of us gave up and decided to go back. Anyway, that was no problem to enjoy the wonderful landscape.

This hottie you can see next to me is not Gandalf or the Pope (which is what I first thought), but Saint Patrick. Aren't we a perfect couple?
After being cold and quite scared, we picked up our stuff and had lunch in the Irish version of McDonald's. Then we had a 5-hour trip back to Dublin, so we didn't do anything else during the rest of the day.

It was a great trip. I hope I can repeat it once again without creative suicide attempts. What I really regret is not having a picture of the Abbey of Connemara, a fairytale castle I could only see from the bus...