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Today was our day to visit the Cliffs of Moher. Jessie has already been to visit the Cliffs, so she stayed in Galway to finish her paper due on Friday while we did something she had already done. The day started with a wonderful full Irish breakfast: fried eggs, sausages, ham, potato cake (must have potatoes), Irish brown bread, toast, juice and coffee. We made it through Galway without any problems and headed south around Galway Bay. We stopped at Dunguaire Castle in Kinvarra to take a few pictures and walk around the castle. We originally wanted to take the coast road to the Cliffs, but crazy Irish drivers caused a change in plans.
Side note: The roads outside the city get very narrow. There are stone walls everywhere. Apparently, in clearing their fields the people stacked the stones into walls to mark property lines, etc. Believe me, there is no shortage of stone in Ireland! There are no right-of-ways along the roads so these stone walls border the road in many places. When I say border the road, I don't mean 5 feet off the road, I mean they are right on the edge of the road. The speed
limit on most roads is 100 km/hr (~70 mph) and Irish drivers do every bit of the speed limit. So you can imagine, your driving on the wrong side of the road, your on a narrow, winding road jammed between stone walls and onrushing cars/trucks(big)/tour buses(big)/tractors(big), and you have crazy drivers behind you about to run over you.
Back to the story...so we are on the narrow, winding coast road when all of sudden this crazy Irish driver comes flying up behind me. There is no place for him to pass (they are not bashful about passing), so I start looking for a place to pull to the side so he can get by. We came upon a road so I quickly turned in. I see a sign thats says "The Burren" (not pronounced like the President, Martin Van Buren, but rather like "barren" with a southern drawl, as in "the desert is a burren place"). We had planned to come back through The Burren after the Cliffs, but since we were already on the road we decided to change our route. This is the advantage of renting a car and planning your own driving tour. The disadvantage is
not all the roads are on the map...we later found out that we were no longer on the map! This turned out to be a pleasant mistake. We soon passed the ruins of an old abbey and turned off the road to investigate. We took many pictures and explored the cemetary. Later that evening we showed Jessica the photos and she commented that it was an excellent example of Romanesque architecture, which coincided with the dating of the original construction...I guess Jessica was paying attention in class!
We left the abbey and continued on to the Cliffs. Passing through The Burren, we drove through a beautiful valley with green fields bordered by enormous limestone hills. We crossed one of these hills on the way to the Cliffs. There is nothing but limestone, scrub brush and some kind of tree with giant thorns. We have these trees on our property, but we still don't know what they are. We stopped at The Portal Tomb, the best example of a Neolithic tomb in The Burren. We knew it must be important...it was a pile of rocks with a placque on it!
Back on the road to the Cliffs...on the way
Pam spots a little village on the coast below us. She believes it will give us a good view of the Cliffs from below. So we pull onto a road that looks like it should go down to the village. It turns out this road goes right past an old castle tower. I stop to get some shots with the coastline in the background. When we get down to the town, we find out that this is Doolin, the port from which you can take a cruise out to see the Cliffs from the water. We decide to pass on the boat trip, but spend a while exploring the shoreline at Doolin point. I get some amazing shots of the waves crashing into the rocky shoreline.
Finally we get to the Cliffs of Moher. We park the car and walk out to the edge of the Cliffs. As we get closer to the Cliffs, the wind gets stronger and stronger, until finally you have to lean forward to keep from being blown backward. The Cliffs drop 670 ft straight down to the ocean. There is a castle tower on one of the points that sticks out into the ocean.
Pam and I had to get into an illegal section of the Cliffs, i.e., not open to the public because there are no rails to prevent you from plunging to your death. Last year, a man was supposedly blown off the Cliffs in this area from a sudden gust of wind, or a healthy push from his wife. Needless to say, I let Pam lead the way. I think the brush with death was well worth it!
We leave the Cliffs, exhausted from battling the wind and take the scenic coastal road back to Galway. We stopped for dinner at Keough's Pub in Kinvarra and had a great dinner and good conversation with the barkeep. They also had Wi-Fi so we were able to publish our first blog. Imagine that, enjoying a pint of Guinness at a small Irish pub in a tiny fishing village while blogging on the Internet! It doesn't get much better than that!
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