Day 4: County Clare

After nearly sleeping though breakfast this morning, we made our way south into County Clare, towards the Cliffs of Moher. The scenery along the coast is the type of stuff that people put on postcards. The guidebook that we have claims that this area along the western coast receives some amount of rain, on average, on 300 days of the year. Indeed, on the drive out there, it was raining intermittently, but pretty much as we came down towards the cliffs, it cleared up and turned into a beautiful day.


The roads along the coast down there were marked as scenic, which meant that, once again, they were windy, narrow, and fast. I'm getting pretty good at navigating these crazy roads in the Hyundai. Sabrina said "I liked it better when you weren't comfortable driving on the left" or something like that, probably just after I passed someone on a road that was barely wide enough for 2 cars at once.


On the way out of Galway this morning, I remembered that I forgot to comment on the roundabouts. The main highway into Galway City has lots of intersections with other major roads. At some of these junctions, there are roundabouts. This isn't a huge deal, because I learned to drive where there are rotaries, which are pretty much the same thing: two lane circle, traffic coming into the circle must yield. The roundabouts here, of course, go clockwise. Also, traffic goes from 100 km/h to 60 hm/h quite rapidly ("traffic calming ahead" as they put it), to navigate the roundabout, and then back up to 100 km/h again. There are 5 or 6 roundabouts withing a dozen kilometers east of Galway. And watch out for "loose chippings," too!


I'm having a lot of fun driving on these roads. I've basically gotten to drive like I wish I could back in the US, but it's legal here! A lot of today was spent on roads with a speed limit of 100 km/h again, but I stayed around 70 or 80 for most of them, becaus the Hyundai isn't the smoothest ride in the world, and I really don't think the roads are conducive to that speed anyway.


At the Cliffs of Moher, they have an extensive visitor center built into the side of a hill.

The cliffs themselves are pretty ridiculous, and I busted out the video camera again, to get the full effect. Also, the video camera has 25x zoom, while my digital camera has none... so, it just worked better. Fear not though, Sabrina took pictures too. I might even try to send the video home somehow, eventually.



On the way back to Galway from the cliffs (also on the way there, somewhat), we passed through the Burren, a large area of Clare made up of limestone hills. It's really quite incredible, there are just limestone chunks everywhere, and sheep/cows grazing amongst the rocks.


We took a different route back, to see a few more places. In one small town, we stopped for a late lunch at the first pub I saw. (Every small town, even of only a few hundred people, has at least 2 pubs, it seems. Just find the Guinness signs.) There was an older woman tending bar, and two older men drinking Carlsberg. I asked if they were serving food (some places serve lunch from 12-2:30, then close the kitchen until dinner). She said "sure" and put the specials board back up. I don't know why they were called specials, I'm pretty sure all they had were specials.

Forgot to get a picture of this place, but it was memorable.... mostly due to the fact that we could barely understand a single word that came out of the mouths of these three people. At first, I thought it might be Gaelic, but it turned out to be English, once they slowed down and enunciated a bit. I had to interpret to Sabrina when one of the men asked if we had any Irish roots, and if we were trying to locate them, etc. Also, I learned what Hurling is, and that it is played with a stick that looks like a cross between a lacrosse and field hockey stick.


Later down the road, ("just through town, take a left at the castle," as the bartender put it) we stopped to tour the Ailwee Cave, in the Burrens again. This was a series of natural, limestone caves cut into the rock hillside by melting glacial rivers.

Sabrina never had to duck, not once. Other people (not me) were hitting their heads on the ceiling.


I've now tried just about all of the local beer that I can find on tap. I passed on Stella and Heineken tonight, but had Carlsberg and Smithwicks again, which I think is my favorite, despite the Guinness hat I'm wearing in a bunch of pictures. And I saw people drinking Miller out of a bottle (they also have Budweis on tap.... ugh). I commented to the bartender that I couldn't believe people drink Coors Light, and he said "I can't believe a lot of people drink what they drink here." Turns out he was from Slovakia... so he's a little picky about his beer, for good reason.

Now that I look, I think some of the pictures are out of order (trying to reconcile order between two cameras, and my camera timestamps them wrong), and one might even be upside down...