Day 3 – Kylemore Abbey – the heart as it is

Despite all the car stresses this day, this was my absolute favorite part of the trip so far! The rental car kept coming up with the low tire pressure sign and that was stressful having to go off to some gas stations to figure out what the issue is (we later found out it was just glitchy basically). We got to Kylemore Abbey an hour after we intended to, but we still had enough time to explore the entire grounds and abbey.

Kylemore Abbey is all the way on the east side of Ireland, so we had to drive around 3 hours from Dublin to get there. The Abbey is still run by nuns, and there is actually still an active all girls boarding school there to this day. Anyhow, to get to the abbey, we had to drive through Connemara National Park which was absolutely stunning. I would return to Ireland just to explore this area more. The photos really do not do the area justice and people have said that they wonder if the Garden of Eden was here once – just to testify to its beauty. There was so much purple from all the flowers and surreal bodies of water, but here is just what I got on camera from our drive up:

When we finally arrived, we checked in our tickets (which was easy to snag online) and had lunch in the cafeteria area:

We then decided to first visit the garden, which actually was a bit underwhelming. The areas around the garden were stunning though, like the horse field overlooking a valley and the forest areas surrounding it:

There was also a very small church on the grounds as well:

Here are photos of and inside the abbey:

Finally, some other miscellaneous photos of the place, that more accurately showcases the beauty of the Connemara area:

This was the only souvenir I feel like I liked. I ended up eating all the chocolate and flipping it inside out to use as a bookmark as the inner part is a photo of Kylemore Abbey:

As stressful as this day was, I was happy to finally have visited this place and it had been on my bucket list for a while as the abbey and the nature surrounding it was just so beautiful.