The Connemara

We spent Saturday taking a trip into the Connemara.  It is a sparsely populated section of Galway County, the northern part of which has gigantic rocky mountains that have tons of sheep roaming all over them, and also contains ireland's only fjord.  The south... well not so impressive in comparison, it was kind of like a large field of rocks and so we are told that everyone there still primarily speaks irish (gaelic).

Click on this picture to expand it, its a 180degree shot from the front of Kylemore Abbey.

The front of Kylemore.  This place is home to 15 nuns.

Three pictures from the gardens of Kylemore:

Near Maam crossing, i don't know what the wind is doing to my hair here:

This is harvested peat, from the peat bogs.  They use this as fuel since it burns very well once dried.  

One of the many, many times we saw sheep, this time they were running in front of our bus on the road.  A couple times we had to stop and wait for them to get off the road.  Sheep must outnumber people in this area like 100 to 1.  In fact if you expand the previous picture of me you'll see white dots all over in the background, those are all sheep and for a couple hours of driving each way the entire landscape and the tallest mountains are all speckled with them.

Coffee & Cigarettes

The café & shop where i volunteer at:

Petra (our one roommate) left her cigarettes out.  I found the warning label to be much more to the point and appropriate than the fine print on US ones:

House of Leaves

Salthill

Today we went on a walk to nearby town of Salt Hill.  On the way we saw this guy playing music, the name of his band is "Just Will and friends".

The Ladies Beach

We walked out on this stone pier and tried to take a photo with the timer, but the wind was nuts and was blowing the camera and us over.

Palm trees, it seemed really out of place but there are a number of plants along the beaches here that seem more tropical than should be here.

I have no idea what this was, a mime playing the triangle.

A drum circle and 5 girls doing modern dance at the spanish arches.

Eyre Square

Friday

After taking these photos today i realised that the reason my camera had been taking blurry pictures all week wasn't due to the constant rain, it was due to a huge fingerprint.  So this set of pics marks the end of misty looking pictures.

The weather here is really strange. When i say consant rain, i mean that 90% of the day might be no rain, but nearly every 30 minutes to 1 hour you'll get 5 minutes of rain out of no where.  

The Bay

Tabula Rasa

Shop street, just a few steps from our street... its i suppose what you'd call the newbury of Galway:

Buttermilk alley, we ate just off there for our 2nd wedding anniversary tonight.

From our kitchen & balcony:

Random shots from walking today:

Zzzzzzzzzzzz

Dance Party 2008

The last night in Boston.  I saw this mural on the walk to central square.

The Office

I took this photo of Boston from the mass ave bridge, walking home from lunch with Kevin & Arvind on Newbury street on wed.

The Office:  Everything in this office is a drab shade of beige, except for my coworkers, Frank, Arvind, and James.

The first weekend

The first weekend of the summer.  Megan's graduation at MIT started off in a torrential downpour, and a speech by nobel prize winner Muhammad Yunus.   It was followed by what is now the 4th day of 90+ degree heat and some intense humidity.  This clearly was not the most ideal time to move, but without choice we spent the last several days moving and now its down to the bare bones of my soon to be bachelor pad.  Megan flies out in several hours and if all goes well she will meet Claire & Siobhan tomorrow to take over the apartment.  I then have the rest of the week here to hang out pretty much with an old mattress, my laptop, the book 'A People's History of the United States', and my xbox.