1 Aug, Sunday

Our fears about noise were well founded. We could tell when the bars closed at 0300 because the amplified music stopped and the parties moved out onto the sidewalks and streets. This continued for about another 1.5 hours, when the beer they'd purchased at last call must have started running out. After that, the din was sporadic rather than continuous, seemingly caused mostly by transient bands of celebrants as they passed through our area. By 0630, things were fairly sedate. We arose at 0800, packed, left our bags for Polly to store for the day, and walked to the bus station for our day of touring.

We were put on a large site-seeing coach with about 45 other folks and driven into the countryside. At one point, the driver stopped on the road and spent about five minutes pointing out where a colony of rabbits lives in a roadside field. Rabbits must be a lot scarcer here than they are in Texas.

Fortunately, when we reached the hiking tour point of departure, we were the only ones who got off the bus. We were taken on a guided tour up into the Burren Mountains by a local fellow who was a wealth of knowledge about the geology, biology, and history of the area. The hike was mostly on his family's land, which they have owned for a couple of hundred years. There were only four other people on the hike, and it was extremely pleasant. After we'd had a slice of Mom's apple pie, another bus stopped by for us and we continued on toward the Cliffs of Moher. We stopped along the way to look at scenic views and the odd castle or old church ruins.

The cliffs are 700-feet-high sheer bluffs along the Atlantic coast. In addition to being one of Ireland's most popular tourist destinations, they've been used as locations for many movies and TV shows, including Harry Potter and Father Ted. There were countless cars, a whole fleet of tour buses, and tons of people. Take away about 90% of that and it would be a really nice place. There's a lookout tower at the top of one hill where you can climb up to take pictures. Outside the tower, we found a small child of about two years looking around and saying "Daddy?" over and over. Janene took him in hand and I shouted into the tower if anybody was missing a child. Nobody was. We continued asking around and looking for Daddy for several minutes before a park ranger and a frantic dad came running up the path. The tyke had wandered off and traveled about 1/4 mile on his own from the visitor's center to the tower. We handed him over and all was right with his world again. It was reported that Simon Cowell was also visiting the cliffs, but he must not have seen us, since he didn't come over and introduce himself.

We knew our timing to catch the last train to Dublin was going to be a bit tight, and our bus was running about twenty minutes behind schedule, so when it stopped at the bus depot, we hit the ground running. Well, jogging, actually. We grabbed our bags at the hotel, waved goodbye to Polly, and hustled onto our train with ten minutes to spare.

Our good weather luck ran out, and it was raining steadily when we arrived in Dublin. Then we found that the bus route we took to the station doesn't run on Sunday. So we improvised and overcame and found the hostel without getting soaked. The best thing was being able to pick up our BritRail passes, which were waiting for us just as planned.

Irish cottage

roof being re-thatched

the elusive Irish rabbit?

Burren Hike

"Visit the Heart of the Burren"

limestone rocks

Burren mountains

hiking guide

Burren farms

Burren farms

Corcomroe Abbey	Joe & Janene on Burren hike	rock fossil
looking west toward abbey ruins	medieval church ruins	rock cairn

To the Cliffs

Muckinish West Tower House

Newtown Castle

view from Corkscrew Hill

"We're here for the craic, the women and the beer...!"	Emerald Isle	Cliffs of Moher tickets
Primrose Cottage in Doolin	Inisheer from Doolin

Cliffs of Moher

Cliff Walk	O'Brien's Tower	The Cliffs of Moher
at O'Brien's Tower	Janene at the cliffs	Janene & Joe at the cliffs
looking N from the tower	returning to the bus	Cliff Walk from the bus

Heading back to Galway

Ballinalacken Castle

typical 2-lane road

Bothar nA hAillite

4:53 pm

preparing to climb down

start of crevice

looking down

rappelling down

zoom on rappeller

Continuing along the coast...

Craggagh Cemetery

Fanore Beach

impressive rock wall

Irish donkeys

Ballyvaughan

Kinvarra

The Merriman Hotel

Dunguaire Castle