Waking up in Galway on your birthday is a good way to do it. Or rather, being awakened, as per the usual Swedish style. We had to get up early to catch our daytrip bus, so of course the kids and Anders woke me up even earlier with singing, hugs, and a new iPad (yay!). The next morning we walked through Eyre Square on our way to the hotel where we were meeting the bus. And Karin ran into someone she knows! Because of course she did! She knows everyone! Someone she went to school with, who had actually been on our plane to Dublin, was visiting her grandmother and they were in Galway for the day. What are the chances of meeting a Swede that you know at 8 am on a Sunday morning on a random city street on the far west side of Ireland?
I had booked a full-day tour out to the Cliffs of Moher, one of the natural attractions in Ireland that I’ve been wanting to visit since we had planned our trip to Ireland 10 years ago, that never happened. Our driver and guide was John B (with Lally Tours) and he was FANTASTIC. A small smiling witty man with a very pleasing accent and the ability to hold your interest over hours on a bus with continuous information about Irish history, lives, landscape, and language. He told us interesting things about everything we passed and made the trip fly by. We stopped for photos at the ruins of Dunguaire castle and then spent about an hour at Ailwee Cave in The Burren (where we had another fantastic guide).
Dunguaire Castle ruins
Typical thatched roof houses of the region
Waterfall in Ailwee cave
The day was perfect, sunny and breezy with scudding clouds overhead. The Irish landscape we drove through was stunning, rocky and pasture-filled with fields of cows and sheep. He told us about the Irish famine and the effect it had on the population and the area and pointed out the ruins of famine cottages and the still-standing famine walls that the English made the starving people put up as work for “famine relief”.
The Burren with a view of a famine wall up the hill in the distance (famine walls served no purpose at all)
The next stop and the highlight of the day was arriving at the Cliffs of Moher. Despite the huge attraction that this place has, the logistics for the roadways in and the parking are NOT adequate and we had quite a long wait in traffic before our bus could pull up into the coach parking lot. The visitor center, giftshop, restrooms, and boutiques are all built into and under the hillside so they don’t destroy the natural beauty of the place. There is a long walk up along the entire length of the cliffs, and a 15 minute walk up to the viewing tower, but thankfully they had a cart service for disabled and handicapped needs, and with my knee still giving me issues, I was very happy about it, as we didn’t have a lot of time and I would have used it all up walking up and down so slowly.
It was quite windy at the top but the sun was shining and it was beautiful. John B told us that it had been so misty/foggy the day before that the cliffs were invisible, so we really got lucky. We could see quite far, and had a very good view of the “Harry Potter” cave. It was used as a filming location (the only one outside of the UK) for Tom Riddle’s cave in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Martin and I walked up to a viewing platform along the top of the first cliff and then walked back over to the tower to catch the cart back down the hill, in time to quickly visit the bathrooms and the shops before we had to be back on the bus. Anders and Karin hiked up to the other side.
We then stopped for lunch at a hotel in Doolin before heading back north up the coast toward Galway. We stopped one more time on the coast at Lurraga Ballyryan and visited Black Head, right by the water. I couldn’t walk down very far as it was quite rocky and uneven, so Karin took my phone and went all the way to the edge of the cliff to take photos. So beautiful and such an unusual landscape. It reminded me both of Iceland and the west coast of Sweden.
After we got back to Galway, we rested for an hour in the AirBnb, and then Anders, Karin, and I went to dinner. Martin wasn’t feeling well and was coming down with a cold, so he ended up staying home. I had booked us at one of the “fancier” restaurants, which turned out to be right around the corner called, appropriately enough, Brasserie on the Corner. The food was great and the company delightful, though we missed Martin. 🙂
The next morning we walked to the Latin Quarter and the Quays (tourist area). There were two fun markets going on and I bought a little ceramic bird-heart ornament. We saw the Spanish Arch as well, and then headed back to the train station to get our train back to Dublin and continue on to Belfast.
Musician under the Spanish Arch
Juvenile seagull at Eyre Square
All in all a very good day to turn 60!
Next stop: Belfast, Northern Ireland
Mood: happy
Music: Jimmy Nail—Big River