Clarion Hotel in Sligo

In the third week of October, Steve had a conference in Sligo Town, in County Sligo. The town is about 1-1/2 hours away - north and west of us.  It is on the northern coast, but not as far north as Donegal and Derry and things that are on the Eastern part of the Northern Coast.  I don't know, does that make any sense?  It will if you look at a map!

So, Steve had a 3 day conference and since the hotel was covered and it was near my birthday, I decided to go with him so I could go see some things.  We stayed at The Clarion, which used to be an insane asylum.  It was a bit intimidating! 

I read a book by Sebastian Barry called "The Secret Scripture" and in it he tells a story of a woman who  has spent most of her adult life living in such an institution, and at her age of 100, they are closing the facility and the doctor is trying to sort out where the patients need to go and thus learns her history.  The 100 year old patient, Roseanne, is from Sligo, but the facility is in Roscommon.  Still, staying here made me think of it, and her, and the author, and really added to my fascination with the hotel. 

I think every room in the hotel was a suite, with a bedroom, bathroom, living room and small kitchenette!  The had a lovely restaurant and a decent pub on site, and the basement had a workout club that was free for hotel guests.  It was really quite nice, even though it looks foreboding.  Still, it's appropriate for us to visit these ominous hotels in October!
 

We drove up on Monday, October 20th and had time to get some lunch together at the pub on site at the hotel.  Then Steve went off to his meetings and I went downtown to shop!  We met up later for drinks in the pub and watched Manchester United on the big screen tv with a lot of Steve's colleagues.  It was all good craic!