Kenmore Abbey and the Smelliest Man Alive

Yesterday during the day we went on a day trip to tour Connemara and Kylemore Abbey. Our tour guise was named Tom and he was awesome. The whole way he told us interesting information about each town we past and cracked some Irish jokes. OH TOM! For example, an interesting tidbit including how the farmers harvest peat/sod and how the farmers use it to fuel their homes during the winter.

Something else I learned, not from Tom, but a sad story nonetheless is that during the mass emigration from Ireland during and after the potato famine is that families would have American wakes for their sons leaving for America. Transportation was so hard to come by and so expensive that they know their sons would never return, that they would never visit them in America. So they would have wakes for their sons while they were still alive, and present, because they'd never see them again before they died. That's what the song "Danny Boy" is about.

Anyways, we stopped at a couple places, but the main stop was obviously Kylemore Abbey. It is a beautiful piece of architecture that a man made for his family and his wife. It took years to build and gave over 100 people jobs. The home even had it's own fire brigade. But the woman died on a visit to Cairo back in the day, and the guy went crazy and became poor without his wife and sold the house. Years later, the Irish Benedictine nuns made the house into their abbey. The abbey is huge, but on the tour you're only allowed to see three rooms. Kind of a rip off. As Katie said, "7 euro for only three rooms? What a rip off. There'd better be a bomb ass gift shop." And there was!

The rest of the abbey is cloistered and private for the Sisters and their school. Yes, there is a boarding and day school in the abbey. Isn't that crazy? My high school was built in the 70's and therefore much uglier than this place. I wish I would've worn my "everyone loves a catholic girl shirt" a) because it would be inappropriate and b) as Katie pointed out I could go up to the one nun we saw and get a picture with her and say "You know what I am talking about, right sista?" and then give her a high five. lol.

There is also a restored cathedral/church on the grounds as well as a mausoleum. I peed my pants walking over to it because I saw in the distance Katie ask Carrie, "when was Kylemore Abbey born?" And Carrie just look at her like, "Wtf are you talking about?" After that, you can take a shuttle to the kylemore abbey gardens. I won't bore you with all the pictures, but it was beautiful and we again lucked out with the weather. (I'll just bore you with some of the pictures)

So on our return trip we stopped at a couple picture points. This is where I took the pic of the smelliest man alive on our bus.


Seriously, it was disgusting. And he had a wife! He was from someplace in Eastern Europe and was all oily and smelly. It was the worst b.o I'd ever smelled and that's saying a lot... I taught 120 14 year old boys during the hot August months with no A.C. Katie explained that in some places in Europe the scent is considered masculine. If that's the case, this guy was the most masculine man on the planet. At one point he stood up to shut the windows on the roof of the bus and when he raised his armpits I nearly lost consciousness. I am not being sarcastic. I gagged in my mouth and vurped. Then smelly von smellerberg was cold so he asked the driver to turn off the ac, which was fine. Except it's Ireland, so ten minutes later it was burning up. I decided to be passive aggressive and just keep opening and closing the vent thing so it made a lot of noise and Tom would turn the AC back on..... And he did. Katie just shook her head at me.

On the way back we stopped at the connemara marble factory and store, which is where the bracelet of my gramma's that I wear is from. But things were pricey and not as pretty as my bracelet. We also stopped at the Quiet Man Cottage. We got off and took a pic and were pretty much the only ones. "We suffered through three hours of John Wayne of course we're getting a gd picture.