"Small" trip to Sligo (7.11.)

I'm not exactly sure how that happened, but I think it went like this: I just intended to watch a film for my German class on a Sunday evening. And even before we had started watching it, we had agreed on going to Sligo five days later. Well... :-D
Initially, we had planned to stay there for two days. But when we had to realize that it wasn't too easy to find a hostel that wasn't booked out, and that we might need the time of the weekend for, ahem, other stuff, we decided to handle it a bit differently.
But first, let me mention the "other stuff": I'm referring to the assignments that were due at that time. Since we had spent the study week with doing everything but studying, the studying had to be done at some other point. So I ended up in the library after the rehearsal of the choir, for example. That was where the following conversation took place (not the exact wording, naturally):

- What are you doing here?
- Well, I have two* assignments due next week and have to do some reading now.
- Two assignments? So, what are you doing at the weekend? *haha*
- Ahem, actually, I'm going to Sligo on Friday...
- What?! You have to write two essays for next week (and haven't written a single word so far, annotation of the author), and you're going to Sligo on Friday? You're worse than me...!

* Tbh,  I was even thinking about doing three assignments at that point. But the third one was not obligatory (the good thing about having to do 3 out of 5 worksheets), so: bye bye :-P

I'm not exactly sure how bad that is, but I felt like I was being a relatively bad person then. Didn't prevent me from going to Sligo, though. xD
Since we decided not to stay overnight, we had to try and make the most out of one day. Which means we took the first train in the morning. Can't remember the exact time, but it was probably something around 8 a.m. Yeah, and since the last train back to Maynooth would have departed way too early (something around 6 p.m.), we decided to go back by bus. Because there was a Bus Éireann leaving from Sligo at 1 a.m. xD An no, that's not normal for Irish public transport, the destination of this bus was the airport. But it was so nice as to stop in beautiful Maynooth on its way there.
Anyway, we took the train at a rather early time and were quite early in Sligo (despite of the obligatory delay of Irish Rail :-P). But yeah, it was not exactly the plan to stay in Sligo town for the day - although it's a city compared to Maynooth -, but to go to a mountain named Knocknarea (no clue about the pronunciation, but I hope the spelling is correct at least) somewhere nearby. Of course, not near enough to just walk there. So we got to enjoy public transport again. And - of course² - the bus didn't stop directly at the mountain, but at some street with a sign "Knocknarea 3km" or something like this.
Which means we had a nice walk to the mountain. And I'm not being sarcastic this time, it was really nice. Even the weather was nice & warm & dry, I have pictures to prove that!

Oh, sheep (trying to hide)

It's a long, long road...

Oh, cows - and people taking pictures of them!

Oh, more sheep!

Oh, and more cows!!

After some time, we eventually reached the mountain. But somehow, we were a bit on the wrong track and couldn't make it to the top that way. Our surrounding was nice anyway.

But at some point, the beautiful Forbidden Forest environment got slightly too bushy for my taste, and started to remind me of the hike with the Rovers. If you read my post about it, you should know which kind of traumatic experience that was for me... So we eventually decided (were forced) to go back and ask someone for directions.
When we reached the way a nice person had described to us, there was actually a sign saying, Knocknarea this way... Whatever. xD
So we were finally back on the right track and actually made it to the top of the mountain.

Oh, even more cows! xD

Slightly wet path.

Made it to the top.

Necessary selfie. Not the first one. But the only one in this post.

Sunshine + rain = rainbow!

Even wetter path after the rain.

On top of the mountain, it started raining, of course. So we went down again. And decided to continue walking a little bit further, since Strandhill wasn't supposed to be very far away. Well... I was able to take some nice pictures - on the way there, because when we finally reached Strandhill, it was getting dark. :-P

Cows - what a surprise!

In Strandhill, we just went to a "fancy" restaurant, where we could get food. And wait for ourselves to get dry again. Then we took the bus back to Sligo, checked out the town a bit (Tesco and Penneys were part of that...) and finally went to the cinema to watch Interstellar. Actually, this was the first time in an Irish cinema for me, because Maynooth doesn't have one, while there are two in Sligo... This was a really nice ending for a great day. Or, wait, this was not the end. To be precise, the end was taking the bus at 1 o'clock. But it was a nice end anyway, because for once, Bus Éireann was there on time. So I was really at home shortly before half past four, as far as I can remember...

P.S. I almost forgot the inevitable map to illustrate where I've been this time. Sorry! :-D Here it is:

In the north of Ireland, pretty close to Northern Ireland.