Today's itinerary was to leave Killarney and meander toward Galway, making sure to hit the Cliffs of Moher on the way. Mostly, it was going to mean a lot of time in the car and scenery. I immediately fell asleep! I've been good at waking up about 6am, but then, with no coffee in me, my eyelids have been getting heavy about 9-ish.
I woke up to hear our driver badmouthing Eileen - seems she did her job, which is to lead us on the quickest, most direct path, but he wasn't expecting a ferry. Turns out, though, that this ferry ride was going to cut about an hour or so off the drive. The good Lord got us on the ferry seconds before it pulled out and we trotted up to the top to see what we could see. Despite very overcast weather, it was fabulous up there, the wind blowing my increasingly disheveled hair and putting a wee bit of pink to my cheeks.
We arrived at the Cliffs of Moher and I had to retract what I'd previously said about Ireland and their gift shop savvy. There was a two level center built into the mountain, with a huge gift shop - I bought Gnarley a lovely pair of socks, and a restaurant, and an education center with two videos showing. We didn't bother with the videos - pffftt... After pottying, we started trekking up the hill. It forked and you could go up either way. We ended up going up one, then back down and up the other. The views were spectacular. Again, very overcast, it would have been incredible with blue sky and fluffy clouds, but it was still wonderful. We made sure to take tons of beautiful pics. Although I refrained from making like the German couple in front of us who were taking pics of cows. I'm like... they're cows, but then, that's probably what other people were thinking when I was taking pictures of the sheep.
Holly and Tom didn't manage to make it down the hill until an hour after Bill and me. I had horrible thoughts of someone breaking a leg out there, or falling over a cliff. (You know, I'm still leery about us having to make an emergency trip to an ER at some point on this trip.) But they finally got back. Seems the path continues F-A-R after the point where Bill and I turned back, and they continued to try get closer to some castle ruins... but each time they'd turn a bend, they'd see that it look still just as far off! We had lunch at the restaurant there and then hit the road.
We continued on to Galway. There were a variety of things we could have stopped to see, but our dogs were barking and we were just content to watch the scenery. We did take a scenic drive, during which Tom swore that we were NOT driving any more scenic drives. (That wasn't the only swearing coming from the front seat, let me tell you..) But he successfully navigated us back to the main road and I decided he'd definitely earned that Guinness I told him I'd buy him, so tonight he'd get it.
We did stop at one more sight before hitting Galway - it was Castle Dungaire - it was picturesque, but the 80 or so steps going up were tiring to my increasingly pooped self - and my knee especially. I definitely made up today for not having physical therapy since last week! We saw what there was to see and it was a good thing because they were closing the doors behind us... didn't even give us the opportunity to spend hard cold Euros in the gift shop! We could have had a medieval dinner there - we could smell it cooking - but we really just wanted to get to Galway, find our hovel, find food and relax.
Pleasantly, our hovel for the night in Galway turned out to be what I thought we were going to be having all along so far... college dorms. So it wasn't a hovel at all! And I got my own room :) but the pillow was like sleeping on particularly thick cardboard - wasn't nice considering I normally sleep on two big fluffy ones at home. I thought about sleeping on my sweatshirt and jacket, but was too pooped to get out of bed to get them. But I jump ahead...
After dumping our stuff and resting for a while, we hopped back in the car. Per Rick Steves, Galway is mostly known for its night-life, so we headed "downtown" to a district full of pubs, restaurants, shops, etc. We meandered around, found a nice restaurant that met with Sporty Spice's picky tastebuds and sounded good to the rest of us too. I had a steak covered with mushrooms and grilled onions and some "pepper sauce" not sure what that was, but it was delicious. I asked about iced tea - got a pot of tea and a "pint" of ice. It worked, but the almost boiling tea melted the ice immediately (I wasn't thinking or I'd have let it cool first). It tasted fine, though, if a little warmish. On the way from our dorm, we passed a McDonald's and we plan on hitting it tomorrow to get some iced tea - assuming they have iced tea, which I'm thinking is a big assumption.
After dinner, we trotted around the streets, hit a gift shop or two, got some ice cream, and watched a street performer who juggled with sticks on fire and ultimately was juggling on a unicycle. He was very good, funny, and entertaining. By now it was time for the Argentina/Netherlands World Cup semi-final game. You ask: Rose? What up? You interested in the World Cup? I thought you were anti-sports!? My response is, yeah, I could still care less, but my driver wanted to see it, so we bopped into a bar and watched the game. I listened to a podcast on my iPod and sipped my drink (more of the "hard" stuff - cranberry juice - one thing's for sure, if I have to go to the ER on this trip, it won't be because of a UTI!) We stayed until the first 90 minutes were over, and it was still 0-0... then we headed back to the dorm.
We had good free wi-fi at the dorm and I was able to post entries that I'd been saving up, as well as pics on Facebook. Chit-chatted with some peeps on FB, then finally had to shut off the light, cursing the 6 hour time difference because I was jealous that I was pooped when all my peeps were still up and peppy.
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