Ireland – Cliffs of Moher and Galway

We took our last few days of vacation more slowly, giving ourselves some time to relax and read and wind down before getting back to the real world.

After our last night in Dingle, we were on the road early to get to our ferry. For a while, the GPS on my phone was just not working, and I was afraid we were going to actually have to use a real map (the horror!). Fortunately, I managed to trick my GPS into working again, and we were off, driving over the beautiful Conor Pass.  This road was scarier than I was expecting, as it was way up high on the side of a cliff, and the road was narrow, frequently becoming one lane with nothing but the smallest of stone walls keeping you from flying off. Absolutely beautiful, though, in the bright morning light.

Our ferry dropped us off on the Loop Head peninsula, and we went up to Kilkee to see the Kilkee cliffs, but then continued on, driving along the coast as much as possible.

We finally ended up at Cliffs of Moher, along with a billion other people. Fortunately, the cliffs really were a beautiful site and made up for the hordes of people, and we walked a ways down toward Doolin to get away and get some more views, listening to the thousands of birds below us.

Once we had our fill, we walked back and drove to Doolin for lunch before driving the rest of the way through the Burren, a very lunar-looking landscape (interesting, though not terribly attractive), to end up in Kinvarra.  I love Kinvarra. It’s a small village on the bay about a 40 minute drive to Galway, but has its fair share of restaurants and pubs and Dunguire castle, and aside from the tourists, everyone knows everyone.

The following day, we had planned on driving through Connemara, but we were a bit tired of driving, so decided to just go into Galway instead, and I’m glad we did. I hadn’t really planned on spending any time in Galway, but it’s a wonderful city. The weather was perfect, and there are several blocks that are pedestrian only, so people were just walking through, shopping and eating and drinking, sitting out on patios, listening to street performers, happy as can be.

I know my opinion of places is highly dependent on weather, but I really, really liked the city.

We had a drink on a patio visiting with an English couple about American and UK politics (everyone is very eager to talk about how in the world Trump is a contender for president). We have also noticed a lot of people from the KC area, seeing people in Royals shirts, KU shirts, Boulevard Brewery shirts, UMKC shirts, etc.

That evening, we went out in Kinvarra and listened to some trad music at a pub on the water, which was fascinating and enjoyable and made ever the more entertaining by the very, very drunk people who had come over after the soccer game. We also got to see the castle at sunset with two swans in the water right outside it, and how can you get more picturesque than that?!

On our last full day, we decided to go on back to Galway again since we liked it so much, and the weather was spectacular. We walked around, enjoying the different street performers.

I had read about a vegetarian Indian food stall in the market that was supposed to be really good, so we went to try and find it for some lunch. As soon as we sat down with our food, though, I looked to my right and there was the stall that I had meant to eat at:

And here’s the one that we did eat at:

So you can see why there was confusion. One was Indian food that was “PURE VEGETARIAN FOOD” and the other was “PURE AND AUTHENTIC INDIAN VEGETARIAN AND VEGAN FOOD”. My bad. Oh well, you can’t go wrong with Indian food anyway.

We spent the evening back in Kinvarra, walking by the bay and relaxing at the house. To be honest, we were winding down, and I had gotten into my book, so spending half the day relaxing, and the other half the day walking around a lively city in the sunshine was really the best way to end the trip.

I was sad to leave, but boy was I ready to see my pups.