My Crazy Life: Ireland - Kylemore Abbey

The story of this Abbey is complicated! It, as you might notice from it's sheer grandeur, was initially called Kylemore Castle.

More on that in a minute, but first! We had now made our way all the way to Galway. Galway, or the part we were staying in, had city suburb vibes. It wasn't a big city with the tall building and tiny shops, but it was the kind of city outskirts with the "best buy" and the "walmart" and the "home depot" and strip malls and such. Of course they didn't have those stores specifically, but that kind of thing. Lots of neighbourhoods and "big stores" to purchase from. In all our travels so far, everything was very small town, one of a kind, mom and pop kind of places. Exploring around a little, we saw the very first McDonald's we'd seen yet! We were nearly at the end of the trip, and covered a ton of ground, and not a single McD's to be seen. We didn't want to go for dinner, lol, but it was near our Lodge, so we thought we'd do breakfast.

We were tired at this point. The one night, instead of exploring or doing a pub with music, we stayed in our room, logged into Prime on our ipad, and watched a movie. The Accountant 2, which we enjoyed. It was nice to chill out a little bit, as you might have gathered from all these posts, we had been SO BUSY!

Anyway, McD's! They had different menu items for breakfast, and did not have the breakfast burrito, which is something I enjoy in America. But they had this!

It was HUGE compared to a burrito, double the size, about, maybe triple. Real eggs, fried, and a brown sauce I had never heard of, (but found later on the table at the restaurant in the hotel we stayed at on our last night). It was brown, and sweet - but savory. Odd, but likeable.

On the approach of Kylemore Abbey - this is a tower belonging to the church on the premises - more on that in the next post - but it's wrapped in white "contruction" paper etc at the moment, as it is getting a little attention/fixing/rehabbed.

This castle was built by the Henry family - they were from England, and saw this area on their honeymoon, fell in love, and he promised to make her a summer home here. Indeed he did.

The Henry's are still well thought of here, as they revitalized, singlehandedly, an entire area that was very poverty stricken. He paid 3x the going rate for labour, because he wanted it done fast. I believe they built it in 3 years. It is over 40 thousand square feet!!!

Sadly, his wife only got to enjoy this summer getaway (which she apparently adored), for 4 years. The couple had 9 nine children together, and just 4 years after the completion of this castle, the Henry's took a vacation to explore the ancient wonders of the world in Egypt, where she drank bad water, and died in Egypt 14 days later of dysentery. She was the only one who got sick. He built a cathedral for her on the property, to memorialize her, that is in a separate post.

The Castle was completed in 1871. In 1903 it was sold to the Duke and Duchess of Manchester (she was a "dollar princess" - the daughter of wealthy American Eugene Zimmerman, stockholder and on the board of Rockefellers Standard Oil). They were forced to sell the castle because of gambling debts incurred by the Duke.

It became a home to Benedictine Nuns from Belgium in 1920, and they opened a boarding school for girls there, which only recently closed down, in 2011. The cost of running the school became too great, as they had to pay teachers and staff now - there aren't enough people becoming nuns to run anything, apparently.

This wood is "new" the original house was built all with marble up the walls - when the house was sold to the Duke and Duchess, they demanded a remodel. They were far too modern for the "old fashioned" marble, and so it was torn out - tossed into the lake out front 😱 and replaced with the dark wood.