North of Galway lies the tiny village of Cong, where an entire tourism industry has been built around its history as the filming location of The Quiet Man. My Daddy introduced me to this John Wayne movie, and I have ever since wanted to visit the hometown of Sean Thornton. It’s a remote town, so my husband, who does everything he can to please me, braved driving on the left side of the road to take me there.

We got up early to catch a bus to be at the Enterprise rental company as soon as they opened. Jeff drove, and I navigated using a downloaded Google map, and while he did a brilliant job, the whole trip felt so weird with the difference in driving perspective on the left. They say that Ireland is a land full of rock walls, but I never realized how literal that saying was. While they look beautiful in the distance, rock walls lose their charm when they are just a couple of inches from the passenger window, and a giant tour bus is taking up most of the road on the other side.

We arrived in Cong about thirty minutes before the group tours started descending, and for that time, the village was so peaceful to explore. We toured the Quiet Man Museum, got a couple of souvenirs, and stepped out to find hordes of French and German speaking tourists clogging the streets. It probably wasn’t as crowded as it felt, but I could absolutely feel the difference in atmosphere as we navigated the streets. We visited the Cong Abbey ruins, which was literally paved with grave markers so that there was no way to walk around without stepping on someone’s grave. I think this was Jeff’s favorite part as he found new angles to photograph for several minutes there. Then we walked along the river where “Father Lonergan” did battle with a fish until the famous fistfight between Sean and Danaher. It really was a beautiful place where we could sit and enjoy some quiet for a while. Then we ate at Pat Cohan’s Bar, which was featured in the movie. I had the first plate of fish and chips of our trip, and Jeff ordered what he thought would be a ham and turkey sandwich but ended up being slices of meat covered in gravy, served with mashed potatoes and a vegetable medley. That is not Jeff’s idea of a meal, but he gallantly ate the meat and some fries.

From Cong, we drove to Kylemore Abbey. The drive was the best part of this leg of our journey because we were passing through the Connemara National Park. The terrain is rugged, with rolling pastureland and lakes surrounded by the Connemara Mountains. The clouds hung low to touch the mountain tops like layers of cotton fluff, and the sun threw the crags into relief for an effect pictures can’t convey. Sheep dotted the mountains and roamed free along the sides of the road — and sometimes, right in the middle of the road! Every turn of the road brought a new beauty until we reached the Benedictine abbey at Kylemore Estates. It’s a postcard house from any angle, situated beside a lake and below the mountains.

There are three attractions at Kylemore Abbey: the house itself, a Gothic church, and Victorian walled gardens. We were running short on time by now, and had to chose two of the three attractions. As the gardens were a mile away and only accessible by shuttle, we opted to walk through the other two. The church was small, but beautiful, with large ornate glass windows and signs everywhere asking for quiet, as it was a place of prayer. We walked back to the house, but found the majority of it closed off to the public, as it is a working abbey, and the nuns preferred to be cloistered. Had we time to see the gardens, the admission price might have been worth it, but as it was, I wish we had just gotten pictures of the place from the road and been on our way.

We drove back to Galway, but not before stopping at our last Quiet Man site, the Quiet Man bridge. It looks much the same as it did in the 1951 filming, as long as we looked at it from a certain angle. Jeff got some good photos of it, and I posed where I supposed John Wayne must have stood to look out on “White O’Morn.” Then we arrived at the Enterprise building in plenty of time to return the car, and tried to figure out what bus to take to eat at Shake Dog, an American style diner that would serve food we knew Jeff would eat. Note to self, do not order bacon on anything in Ireland unless you want a piece of fried ham on your burger because to the Irish, “bacon” means “ham.” I was underwhelmed by the burger and fries, but the milkshakes were good.

When Jeff and I got back to our hotel, I was spent from all the walking we had done. I think maybe hitting the hotel door made Jeff realize how tired he was, too, because instead of going back out to see the Spanish Arch like he planned, he wrote his portion of the blog and followed me to bed. Tomorrow we leave Galway and sail to the Aran Island of Inishmore.