Donegal (Dhún na nGall)

Hello! The rest of the flat and I are getting ready to make stuffed shells for dinner, but I wanted to share my experiences in Donegal a little bit more!

The day got off to a rough start for the three of us from Belfast who decided to take the day trip to County Donegal. Nigel had said he could pick whoever wanted to go up from Derry at 9:00 a.m., since Donegal is literally right next to the city. This posed an issue for me, Ben, and Laureen. We could have either stayed on the floor of the Derry folks' apartment on Friday night and left all together, or we could opt to get up at 5:00 a.m. and take the bus to Belfast. Being stubborn, we decided we didn't want to sleep on floors and all grudgingly awoke in the dark and went to the bus station. I'm not going to try to explain why we missed our bus because I still don't understand it. We arrived twenty minutes early to the station, only to watch our bus drive away. I'm blaming Ben. Anyway, we called Nigel and told him our sad news. The next bus didn't leave until 9:30, so that put us into Derry around 11:15 and our day was cut a little short. Fortunately, we still saw most of everything we wanted to see and the experience was definitely worth it.

When we all finally got on the road together (Nigel, Ben, Me, Justin, Laureen, Sarah, Becca, Katie, and Lindsey), the day started to look a little brighter. Not literally of course, because Donegal is the wettest, rainiest place on the island of Ireland. Despite, it was absolutely beautiful. It was all of our first times in the actual Republic of Ireland, and we quickly realised the completely different atmosphere that the lifestyle boasted. What? No Union Jacks? No walls between neighborhoods? Euros instead of British Pounds? Roadsigns in Irish?? That's allowed? I tell you, almost two months in Northern Ireland has probably confused us a lot.

We visited the town of Letterkenny, Glenveagh National Park, Glenveigh Castle, drove past Errigal (largest mountain in Donegal), passed entire towns who's first language is Irish, and lastly went to the Atlantic where we played on the beach and screamed at Boston.













Sigh. Too bad besides the Irish towns, most of the real estate in Donegal is rich, summer homes belonging to people all over the island. I can definitely see why.

cheers,
karen

P.S. Notice in the below video: I'm not driving and videotaping; the steering wheel is on the other side of the car :)