How easy it is to slip right back into normal life. The first time I pulled the car out of the garage I moved to the left side of the road (luckily we live at a dead end, so there’s never any traffic); Richard reminded me to move to the right (and I wasn’t even the one driving in Ireland!), but after that, back to the right side of the road and not another thought. We spent the first few days home being sick, which meant plenty of time (between napping and coughing and wheezing) to go through three weeks of accumulated mail (most of it junk anyway) and settle back into the house. There have been the usual things – allergy shots and doctors appointments and going to work and making plans. There have already been birthday celebrations and shopping for presents for all the other upcoming birthdays and other occasions (graduations, Father’s Day, and so on), and boxes from Amazon have already begun to arrive on our doorstep as a result. My knitting mom called me on Friday afternoon to remind me that that night was a knitting night at the home of our friend-with-a-yarn-store, so after work I went to her house and got to meet her latest batch of tiny foster kittens and then we headed off to the knitting night and it was so nice to be back among all of them.

There are things we really ought to be doing, now that we are home. But with the residual low energy from being sick (and having it settle in my sinuses, of course), I am finding it hard to get motivated to do much more than the basics. We did some serious grocery shopping this weekend, but so far that’s about it. There’s a desk we need to list on Freecycle, and a share in a ranch we need to sell, and goodies from Ireland we need to ship off to various family and friends, but really, it won’t hurt anything to let those things just idle for a little bit longer. There are movies here to watch, and computer games to play, and new Terry Pratchett books to read, and cats to pet and colds to get over, and right now, that’s about the most we want to do.

The flight home was thankfully uneventful, since Richard has been getting slowly sicker over the past day or so. Both planes – the one from Dublin to London, and the one from London to San Francisco – were packed, but I managed to get us both aisle seats on the London to San Francisco leg, so it wasn’t nearly as horrid as it could have been, especially considering that we were on a 777, which means 2 seats on either side, and then 5 in the middle. I sat next to a family of three who insisted on getting out and going to the bathroom at least 4 times during the trip, and all as one group. By the last time the guy on the other end of the row and I were starting to laugh about it, because they would always make me move so they could get out, but not once did they ever make him move. Not that it was a huge hassle – it gave me an excuse to stand for a little while each time, and when you’re squashed into coach seats on an international flight, you take any excuse to get up and move about that you can get.

But I am getting ahead of myself. There was the very short flight over to London, where we had to collect our bags. We were both expecting to have to go through customs since we were actually leaving the airport for the night (and thus entering a new country) but there wasn’t a soul around to check anything. We just got our bags and left, right outside to the taxi queue, where we paid a huge sum of money (huge if you take into account that the dollar is doing spectacularly crappy against the pound) to have a taxi drive us to our hotel for the night. It was a typical business type hotel – you have to pay for anything and everything, including breakfast – but it was a million times better than sleeping on the floor of the airport terminal, especially when one of you is sick.

Heathrow was rather a nasty time-suck of a maze when we flew over to Ireland, but that was because we never left the terminal. This time around it was a piece of cake. We checked in, dumped our bags, and then camped out in one of the little waiting areas in the middle of the duty free shopping district and obsessively watching the little monitors for when they would finally tell us the gate number. Heathrow does it different than any airport Ive ever been in in the US – you don’t actually ever find out the gate number until they are ready to board, so we weren’t the only travelers nervously staring at the screen waiting for it to change from ‘pending’ to something actually useful. And then once it finally did there was the mad dash to the gate, or rather, we were nearly trampled by several other people who apparently did not grasp the concept that every single other person on the flight had also been waiting for the gate assignment and thus the plane was not likely to take off at a moment’s notice if they didn’t race insanely down the corridor no matter who got in their way.

We touched down in San Francisco and got to pick up all our luggage again, and lug it all over the place to go through customs and security and then check it right back in, before boarding our very last plane of the trip, which was a teeny tiny little toy of a plane that had actual propellers in the front, and was so small and compact that my head was barely grazing the roof (and I am 5’3″) and the flight attendent actually had to tilt his head to one side when he stood. But the flight itself was ridiculously short, and finally we were back in Sacramento, where we were met by my parents, and we got our bags, and they drove us home and that was it.

Except, of course, that this isn’t exactly the end, because when doing a head count of all the cats once we got inside we discovered that Azzie was nowhere to be found, even though we tore the house apart top to bottom (and trust me, we *know* all the spots in this house where cats can hide), and to make a long story short, it turns out that the pet sitter had accidently left the back door ajar when she and her boyfriend were cleaning up and while they saw Sebastian sneak out, Azzie (who has never before shown the slightest bit of interest in the big scary outdoor world) slipped out without them ever knowing he’d escaped. There was an hour or so of traipsing around in the backyard with flashlights, calling for a cat (who of course never comes when you call in the first place) and accidently waking up the neighbors, and then finally we heard his very distinctive little whine, and after an exciting chase through the thickest and thorniest of bushes in the backyard, we got him back inside. And by this time it was after midnight and Richard was wheezing and we were both in tears because we were really relieved that he was okay, and that seemed like as good a time as any to just go crawl into bed, and that, then, was finally the end.

Today we decided to just take it easy and not try to do much of anything at all. It’s our last day in Ireland and there is a ton of stuff we could have tried to go see in Dublin, but we’re both exhausted, Richard’s coming down with a sore throat and a bit of a cold, and we just needed a day to unwind and not stress about getting to somewhere at any particular time.

So this morning we ate breakfast leisurely, and then checked out of the hotel and dragged our bags up the street about 4 blocks until we reached a bus stop where we could catch a bus that would take us to the city center. We didn’t have long to wait, and we both collapsed in a seat with our suitcases and our coats and stared blearily out the window until we started to recognize where we are and knew it was time to get off.

The internet cafe where I’m typing this entry allows you to leave your luggage for a small fee, which was a plus since it turns out that our hotel had nowhere to stash our stuff once we checked out, and the guy at the tourist info office yesterday had serious doubts as to whether there’d be any working (or available) lockers at the main bus terminal. So we dumped off our bags once we arrived this morning, and the rest of the day has been spent ambling slowly around. We found a used bookstore and miraculously tracked down used copies of two books by Terry Pratchett that are no longer in print in the states, so of course we had to buy them. We found another bookstore – this one huge enough to have three floors of books, stationary, and music, and also a rather nice coffee shop on the top floor, and we lingered there for an hour or two, drinking coffee and eating scones and reading. We ate lunch in a bagel store, with signs everywhere touting the great health benefits of bagels (this amused us), and I took pictures of the four huge statues that line O’Connell street. They’re all shaped like giant stretched-out rabbits, all made of the same black material, and not a single bit of information about who made them or what they are anywhere to be found.

Yesterday as we were on the Hop On, Hop Off tour bus, we both spotted a Starbucks somewhere near the city center, so this afternoon we spent about half an hour wandering around looking for it. Amusingly, after getting shrugs or only vague slighly confused directions from the various Irish people we asked, we finally got correct directions from another American and finally found it down the one street we hadn’t yet wandered. We found chairs in the back and Richard read a book and I did some knitting, and sitting there, sipping our frappuchinos, it was almost like being in any Starbucks back home.

The first distinct difference between being in a B&B and being in a hotel was quite obvious this morning when, for the first time since arriving in Ireland, we actually had to (gasp) pay for breakfast. Heh. Ah well.

Today we decided that our best bet would be to do one of those Hop On, Hop Off bus tours around the city. Last night we hiked out to the closest stop to our hotel, which is the one at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, so this morning after breakfast we returned there and waited until a bus showed up so we could buy our tickets and then climb aboard. It turned out to be a pretty good way to at least get a view of the city, since doing it by foot would have taken far more time than we’ve got available to us during our two short days here. The busses run every 15 minutes or so and you just get on or off at any of the 20 or so stops along the way, all of which are situated near something interesting.

Our first stop was the old Guiness Storehouse. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to bother with the tour, since I’m not a big fan of beer (I really cannot stand the taste of it), but it turned out there’s nowhere around where I could linger in a coffee shop while Richard went off by himself, so we figured what the heck and did it together. And it was actually pretty interesting, even to a complete teetotaler like myself. The old storehouse facility offers a self-guided tour that covered the history of coopering (making the wooden casks used to store the beer), brewing, and of the company itself, especially its impact on the economy of Dublin, which has been substantial. In centuries passed they’ve been the primary employer for the city, and during parts of our tour around the city throughout the day we heard about various parks and buildings they have either donated to the city, or for which they are providing sole financial support to keep them from going into disrepair. Also, I am apparently a clueless idiot because it wasn’t until today that I finally made the connection between the Guiness Book of World Records and the brewing company (duh).

Our next stop was the Kilmainham Gaol, which we’d been told by someone (neither of us can really remember who now) was a place we shouldn’t miss. I was expecting lots of wandering around and peering into tiny stone cells, and there was a very small bit of that, but the tour itself primarily focused on the fact that a number of the leaders of the 1816 Easter Uprising were held and executed in this particular facility, and not so much on the actual building itself. We did get a bit of additional history of the facility itself, including the fact that the youngest person ever imprisoned there was an 8 year old boy, and that at one point they were shipping prisoners from this jail off to Australia. And the museum section gave a lot more history on the design of the building itself, including an overview of how views on how prisoners should be housed and treated changed over the centuries.

Third on the list was to stop at the city center; or rather, the area near the main bus terminals and the tourist information office, in order to track down bus schedules. We did a little bit of gift shopping, but after chatting with a very helpful man in the tourist office, we have now tracked down where we can store our luggage after we check out of our hotel tomorrow morning, what bus we need to take to get to the center of town, and how we can actually get to the airport tomorrow night without having to try to track down a taxi.

Our last stop for the day was to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells, and it turns out we were lucky to arrive when we did. When we asked about purchasing tickets the man behind the counter told us that actually they were just about to close, so he simply let us walk in without paying and told us we had about five minutes to take it all in. So we bypassed all the rather interesting-looking displays and exhibits about the Books themselves and found the room where the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow are displayed. Since it was nearly time to close, there were actually only a few people there, so we had the books nearly to ourselves. There wasn’t much time to linger, but there was enough time to at least get a sense of how incredibly detailed and vividly colored these books are. I’m not sure how old the Book of Durrow is, but the Book of Kells was written in (I think) 800-something AD.

We also had a chance to walk through the Long Room, which is simply amazing. It’s this huge long room that is filled, floor to ceiling (two stories high) with ancient books, whch are situated in little alcoves down the room. The entire room has that wonderful smell of old books and I am sure I am not the first person to wish that I could just start at one end and work my way through every single one of them, just to have the chance to turn the pages and read those old, old words.

Luckily our timing with buses from yesterday didn’t carry over today, and we managed to catch the very last bus for the Hop On, Hop Off tour, which took us back to the cathedral where we started. We ate dinner in a trendy little restaurant and bar, and then, through trial and error and poking our heads into any shop that looked promising, eventually found somewhere that sold bus tickets. So we are now set for tomorrow with one-day passes that will supposedly let us get onto any bus in the Dublin system including the one that will eventually take us to the airport, in less than 24 hours, heading in the direction of home.

Pictures are online for Kilmainham Gaol, and from around Dublin.

As we packed up our things this morning I couldn’t help but feel a little bit sad about the fact that this was our very last B&B. Tonight and tomorrow night we’re spending in a Travelodge that’s in the less attractive area of Dublin (south of the Grand Canal), mainly because we just wanted to make sure we’d have a room somewhere (it’s a bank holiday on Monday and everyone kept telling us it would be next to impossible to find a B&B if we put it off like we’ve done for all the others). But we have already realized just why it is that it was good we gave up our car this afternoon. Driving in Dublin would have pretty much turned both of us into a quivering wreck. It was bad enough sitting in the back seat of the taxi as the driver careened through the streets for us.

But I am getting ahead of myself. This morning we started of in the teeny tiny little town of Slane, in elaborately decorated house of our very last B&B. We ended up chatting with a young couple from Ottawa who were traveling with their three-year-old son, who was pretty cute and quite charming to everyone, and our host, who was an elderly gentleman who loved to chat. When he found out we all intended to go to Newgrange, he volunteered to call and make reservations for us, which was very nice since this is one of the few sites in the country where the number of visitors is restricted.

It didn’t take long to drive to Bru na Boyne, which is the Visitor’s Center for both Newgrange and Knowth. We checked in and managed to get seats on the tours for both of the tomb sites, and then had a short period of time to mill around in the exhibits before hiking off to the bus stop, which is located down a ramp and across two bridges from the visitor’s center.

Our first tour was of Knowth, which is the largest of the passage tombs they’ve uncovered (there are three main ones, Knowth, Newgrange, and Dowth). It’s quite an impressive thing to see – this giant mound that was constructed completely by hand, first creating the central chambers, then the passageways lined with huge stones, and then layers of stones and earth over that to create the huge dome of the tomb. Knowth is surrounded by lots of smaller passage tombs which aren’t nearly as grand in appearance or structure, but still impressive when viewing the site as a whole.

We didn’t get to go inside the main tomb in Knowth very far, since the inner chamber has collapsed and they cannot really repair it without doing serious damage to the entire structure of the tomb. Knowth is the site with more archeological interest because first there were the tombs (built thousands of years ago, and at least 500 years before the oldest pyramids in Egypt), but then various groups built settlements on top of the main tomb, digging ditches, carving out suterains (underground food storage areas that also served as places to hide during times of battle), and so on. In a way, their activities helped to protect the tomb itself, because when the first group dug the ditches around the tomb, they tossed the excavated dirt over the kerbstones, which are massive stones (brought from miles away, according to the archeologists), thus protecting them from erosion so that many of the original carvings are still visible today.

After the tour we were allowed to wander around the site on our own, and here is where Richard and I ended up being the idiot tourists I’m sure all the guides mock. We really did think we were okay on time, but suddenly Richard looked at his watch and realized we were supposed to be getting back on the bus right then, and as we both went dashing down the hill, we heard the tour bus drive away.

Luckily this was still early enough in the day that the tourguides on site were able to contact someone and send out an extra bus just for us, but if it’d been later in the day or later in the season when they’re much busier, we’d have been stuck there til the next tour arrived, which would have also meant we’d have missed the trip over to the Newgrange site. As it was, we roared back into the tour bus stop just moments before the Newgrange tour was to board.

The Newgrange tomb is, of course, the most well-known, since it was found over 300 years ago. And it’s more interesting from a tourist’s perspective because unlike Knowth, you can actually go inside the passage and chamber of Newgrange and see the carvings on the stones above the little chambers, as well as the huge stone basins at the end of each of the little chambers where they found cremated remains of ancient humans. For whatever reason, it appears no one decided to do any kind of settlement on Newgrange, unlike on Knowth (or at least they’ve found no evidence of settlement) so the tomb has remained far more intact.

I’m glad we were able to see both tombs because I think otherwise we would have missed out on some of the interesting history and information surrounding the tombs. The guides were quite clear that there is only speculation on the reasons for why the tombs were built, why or how they were used, and even whether they are even tombs at all; nor is there anything but a number of educated guesses as to the meaning of all those concentric spiral patterns that are seen all over the rocks lining both the outer edge and the inner passageways of the tombs themselves. Still, it was fascinating to see them, in the same way it was so fascinating to walk around Staigue Fort – we were standing in a structure built by humans who were intelligent enough to grasp rather complex math, science, astronomy (the way the entrances to the main tombs are aligned); people who lived thousands and thousands of years ago.

We ate lunch in the visitor’s center at Bru na Boyne, since by then it was nearly 2 and we were really hungry. And then we hopped back in the car and headed off to the HIll of Tara.

Tara is an area of great significance in the mythology and history of Ireland, since this is where the ancient Kings of Ireland were crowned, and where each successive civilization made their mark, all sharing the same feeling that this was a symbolic and sacred space. Over the centuries, such as when Patrick showed up to spread Christianity, and even in more recent times when political leaders of Ireland wanted to make a statement, they would use Tara to do it.

Knowing all this, it was still not as interesting to actually *see* as Newgrange and Knowth. For one thing, it’s really just a bunch of hills and mounds and valleys. There’s a tiny little passage tomb (and they’re pretty sure it is a tomb this time, since they’ve found lots of remains inside, and lots of bodies buried in the earth covering the mound as well), and even after thousands of years, when viewed from the air it is obvious that there was once something there, just by how the ground has been shaped from digging and building and so on. But it seems a little disconcerting to wander around a site of such historical and legendary importance, and to do it while having to watch where you’re walking for fear you’re going to step in one of the too-many-to-count sheep patties that were everywhere.

And on that note, we were done with driving around on our own. We dropped the car off at the airport (and it was a lot easier to find our way this time, now that we’ve got the hang of the roundabouts and the road signs) and then found ourselves a handy taxi, piled all our stuff into his trunk, and set off for Dublin itself.

So here we are, having made pretty much a complete circle around an entire country in just under three weeks (and having already compiled a rather huge list of things we really hope to have time to see the next time we can visit), finally in Dublin, and only two days to see as much as we can see here. Our first night here and we’ve already tracked down two laundrettes (not that we need either of them), four internet cafes all within the span of one block, and the presence of more Spar markets than might be considered necessary within walking distance. As I mentioned above, it’s not the most attractive area of town, but it’s a room, and it’s a bed, and for two nights, it doesn’t really matter.

Pictures are online for Slane, Newgrange & Knowth, and the Hill of Tara.

We finally left Galway for good this morning, although not without a little bit of regret. Both Richard and I have discovered that we much prefer the West Coast of Ireland over other parts we’ve seen, and Galway especially. Our B&B there was really quite nice – comfortable room, and a breakfast that included a huge plate of fresh fruit every morning (since I’m not sure either of us can stomach yet another full Irish fry any time soon). The town is very much a university town, a bit sprawling from what we’ve seen as we’ve passed through it on our journeys here and there, but not too overwhelming.

This morning we headed east, toward the river Shannon, until we reached the site of the monastic settlement called Clonmacnoise. It was started by Saint Cieran and seven of his followers in (I think) the 4th century and grew to be quite a large and thriving community, with seven churches, lots of trade and learning, and so on. It was also pretty tenacious, since it went through 20-something attacks by the Irish, a handful by the Vikings, and I don’t remember how many fires, and it was only when the English came in and sacked it completely (I suspect that was right around the time of the Reformation) that it was finally abandoned.

From the little video we saw, they’ve removed a significant number of the gravestones that used to surround the churches, in order to preserve them, so it wasn’t nearly as crowded with them as I’d been expecting. They’ve also removed all four of the high crosses, placing them inside for protection and building replicas to stand outside where the originals used to be.

When we arrived the place was swarming with about three buses of German tourists. We managed to join a guided tour where the tour guide would speak in English for a short bit, then pause while another woman translated everything she said to English. They’d apparently requested a shortened tour, since once the ‘official’ tour was done and everyone was free to go off and roam on their own, the tour guide came over to us and took us to see a few more things,like the rather unassuming little hollow in a rock where water has collected, which is said to cure warts. After that, we were free to wander around, so we did. We tried out the Whispering Door in the main cathedral (if you whisper against one side of it, someone standing on the other side will hear your words clearly) and we went inside the tiny and rather tilted church of Saint Cieran. It is apparently tilted so much because legend has it that if you take dirt from either inside the church or from under the outer walls, and put it on all four corners of your fields, you will have good crops, so over time local farmers and luck seekers have undermined the walls enough that they’ve started tilting in on themselves. We also took a little walk through the older cemetery, then through the newer cemetery, out onto a tiny little country road, and then over a low stone wall to find the Nuns Church which was also part of the settlement. It was restored in the late 1800’s, but was still in pretty bad shape.

After Clonmacnoise we drove north until we reached the Corlea Trackway, which is a center which was built directly over where an ancient bog road was discovered. Carbon dating puts it as having been built in about 148 BC, which got everyone excited, especially because it’s the largest one of its kind in (I think) the world. Of course, it did sink about ten years after it was built, so it seems like it wasn’t the most successful attempt at road-building (bogs, as I mentioned earlier, are extremely squishy), but it was enough to get all manner of archaeologists all aflutter.

Our tour guide was obviously enthusiastic about the road, and the preservation being done on the bogs, and the history of the ancient Celts, and sometimes she talked so fast it was hard to follow her. But it was all pretty fascinating. She showed us pictures of bodies that have been found in the bog and talked about how a lot of them were placed on old parish boundaries, which would have also been tribal boundaries stretching back thousands of years, and she talked about the sort of things the Celts did and made, and she took us around the bog and showed us all the different plants that grow out there.

After the bog road we continued on to Slane, our stop for the night. The B&B is in an absolutely gorgeous house, and the room is huge. But Slane itself is the sort of town that is nearly non-existant. For dinner we had exactly one choice, since nothing else was open, and this was at 6:30 on a Tuesday night. There is no internet access around Slane at all, so we drove into Droghedea to find an internet cafe there (which, amusingly, charges less per hour than any other place we’ve seen in the entire country), so we could at least upload pictures and check email.

I’m starting to notice all the little ‘lasts’, now that our trip is nearing its end. This is our last night in a B&B here in Ireland; tomorrow is the last day we’ll have the car before we turn it in in Dublin. The days have all been swimming together lately and so it seems odd to think that in less than a week we’ll be home.

Pictures are posted for Clonmacnoise and Corlea.

After figuring out what we’ll need in the way of clean clothes between now and next Friday night (when we fly out), we both realized we needed to do at least one more laundry run. So this morning we stuffed all our laundry into two garbage sacks and dropped them off at a little laundrette we found in Sandhill. We also dropped off our jackets because the weather was nice enough we knew we weren’t going to need them, and more importantly, after the last two weeks of extremely damp weather, they were starting to develop a bit of a mildewy sort of funk.

While Richard dealt with dropping off our laundry, I zipped into the post office to mail a bunch of stuff back home. Or rather, I intended to zip in, but it turned out I had to open up both boxes we’d oh-so-carefully sealed shut to rearrange things, and even move some of my yarn into a padded envelope so all the packages would meet the weight limit (hint – when trying to mail something to the US, if the box is over 2 kg, your shipping cost triples). The women behind the counter were extremely helpful, and more than willing to keep weighing the boxes for me until I got them right.

We toured the Connemara region today, so most of our time was spent driving. But we were driving through some absolutely beautiful country. Some of the landscape is like what we saw in The Burren – the limestone with a thin covering of grasses or wildflowers, or the stone itself peeking through in folds and ripples, with native plants clinging precariously to the cracks and crevices inside. There was a bit of forest here and there, but most of it was the typical farmland, all divided into hundreds of uneven little fields by stone walls that had probably been there for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

We stopped first in Spiddel, to wander around the little crafts complex there. It’s a series of tiny little white buildings that house individual artists, some of whom were there at the time, working on their products. There was a potter with whimsical animal sculptures, and a weaver with brilliant colors in most of her work, and a metalsmith, who made jewelry out of old Irish coins.

The route we took today runs mostly right along the coast, so we had lots of time to look out over the beaches and the water. There are a few tiny little patches of pure white sand here and there, but for the most part the water’s edge was defined by a rather harsh landscape of limestone boulders, many covered in lichens, or sporting a dusting of tiny little pink or white wildflowers, or nearly hidden under an entire forest of seaweed.

We stopped for sandwiches at a tiny little pub somewhere near Carna, and then stopped again in Roundstone, which is a charming little seaside town whose sole claim to fame is the existence of a music workshop with a famous Bohdrain maker. Unfortunately the drum makers where out to lunch, so instead we just poked around in the rather extensive shop and pondered whether or not my niece and nephews needed their very own Irish drums (don’t worry,family members who are reading. We didn’t get them any).

The road wove around along beside the ocean and then eventually turned inland, which meant we were now driving through huge fields populated by pretty much nothing but rocks and the occasional sheep, a number of whom were ambling down the road with determined expressions and absolutely no regard for cars at all (What, you want me to move? Please! I’m a sheep. Go around me). Eventually we started seeing careful little arrangements of peat stacked together to dry, and figured out that we were in the midst of a large peat bog. This assumption was confirmed when I got out of the car at one point to take pictures of the little stacks of peat. Bogs are squishy. VERY squishy.

Our route eventually turned back toward Galway, so we made one more stop before returning to the city – this time to tour an abandoned mine. The Glengowla mine was mined in the 1800’s, completely by hand. They were mainly looking for galena, which is 97% lead and only 3% silver, so they just weren’t the slightest bit interested in the obvious veins of copper or calcite or all the other minerals they were passing by as they dug.They chipped the galena out by hand, then processed it and sent it off to Galway, where it was shipped off to other countries. The mine was eventually abandoned once cheaper sources of lead were found elsewhere, and over the next 100 or so years, filled completely with water, but only about 6 or 7 years ago the owner of the property decided to drain it and open it up for visitors.

There were three of us there for the tour – Richard and I and a middle-aged woman with an expressed fear of heights. We were instructed to select hard hats, and then a young woman took us on the tour, showing us various mining implements that had been left in the mine before it was abandoned, showing us samples of all the minerals found inside the mine, and then eventually taking us down inside.

Mining by hand, especially mining through limestone, sounds like it was not a very fun job at all (although back then it was during the recovery from the potato famine, so I guess any job was better than no job at all). There are tool marks still on the walls showing where they would have chiseled holes for blasting (using bits of gunpowder), and she showed us veins of copper, and calcite, and of course the Galway marble that they were blasting through, which is pretty much everywhere in that area. The mine was constantly damp (and even while we were there it was dripping) and they would drain out the water manually and then carry it off to a nearby lake – water which had been pooling in a mine full of lead, so you can just imagine how poisonous that lake still is. It was pretty interesting, and also a nice change from castles and forts and other ruins (although it still had to do with rock, so at least it kept things consistent!).

Back in Galway (or rather, Salthill), we picked up our laundry, including our jackets which now smell clean and fresh, had dinner at a rather generic sort of restaurant in a hotel (the food was good though) and then came back to the B&B to relax. Richard’s off to Galway this evening to go find music but I’m not really up for more wandering, so I intend to just curl up in bed and maybe do some knitting until I fall asleep.

Pictures from our drive around Connemara are here.

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By the way, tomorrow (May 30th) is my birthday, and I wrote up my birthday wish here.

While we were in Galway yesterday we swung by the offices of the ferry company run by the islanders, and bought our tickets to Inishmoor. So this morning right after breakfast we hopped into the car and headed off to Rossaveal to catch the ferry over.

When we reached the island there were lines of tourbusses all lined up and waiting, and we’d talked about just taking one of those around the islands, but then we spotted a much smaller line of horses and buggies and decided that would be far more fun. It’s been pretty cloudy all day, but not a drop of rain anywhere, so the prospect of riding in a buggy open to the elements was actually a good one, for a change.

Our driver was a crusty character, in his mid 50’s, with a weathered face from spending all his life on the island. He told us the only time he’s ever left is for a trip or two to Galway. The island is only about 9 miles long and 4 miles wide, and has about 800 people (and over 1100 cows). I know that this is likely due to the fact that we moved around so much when I was younger (due to my dad being in the military) but it’s such a foreign concept to me, to imagine staying in such a tiny (by my view) place for my entire life!

The ride in the buggy was, I think, far better than taking the minibus. For one thing, it was a bit slower paced, so we might not have seen as much, but we probably got far more commentary from our driver. He took us past some old churches and the local schools, and up to the entrance to Dun Aonghasa, which is a stone fort built right on the edge of a cliff that over 300 feet high, and it’s several thousand years old. The path up to the fort itself is extremely steep and rocky and pretty much every single person on the path with us was gasping for breath by the time they reached the entrance through the outer wall (Richard and I included). Luckily the area inside the outer wall is full of places to collapse – the landscape of grasses and outcroppings of limestone made sure of that. We waited until we were inside the inner wall to find a place to sit down and have ourselves a little picnic with the rest of the bread and cheeses from yesterday, and we certainly weren’t the only ones who were eating lunch up there as well.

The walls of the fort, as I mentioned, go directly to the edge of the cliff, which falls straight down to the ocean below. I held my breath and inched my way as close as I could make myself get to the edge to get a few shots (stupid fear of heights), but didn’t join the other tourists who were lying on their stomachs on the very edge to look down.

Unlike yesterday’s failed attempt to see the Cliffs of Moher, the weather was perfect for viewing the cliffs around the fort (plus, Pat says the cliffs here are just as good, if not better, than the Cliffs of Moher. Heh). We had a marvelous view out over the water, and across the rest of the island, which is divided into tiny little fields by ancient stone walls pretty much as far as the eye can see.

Once back down the hill, we rejoined our driver and his horse, and wound our way back toward the harbor with the ferries. He took us past more of those tiny rocky fields, and talked about how they ‘make land’ on the island – through application of layers of seaweed and sand, left to mingle together and then planted with grass seeds to provide a shallow ground cover. He showed us where the harbor seals like to sun themselves, and we could actually see a few spotted grey bodies far out on the sand. And then we finally got back to the harbor.

We wandered through the Aran Sweater Shop and Museum (not so much a museum as a series of printed posterboards positioned among all the sweaters for sale) and wandered through there for a bit. I poked around in the sweaters, checking out cables to see if anything might spark any ideas for my next Aran cardigans, but nothing really jumped out at me. So instead we found a little food shop and split a piece of carrot cake and waited for our ferry to arrive, since by then there really wasn’t enough time to walk to anywhere else we might have wanted to see.

On the drive back home we both decided we were in the mood for fish and chips, so we ended up at a Supermac’s for dinner, since it’s the Irish equivalent of McDonald’s (in that it is pretty much everywhere), where we had what is quite possibly the greasiest dinner either of us has ever eaten in our entire lives. It didn’t exactly satisfy the craving for fish and chips, but it did fulfill our fried food and grease quotient for the rest of the year.

Pictures from our trip to Inishmoor are here.

The nice thing about touring a country the way we are doing it is that we can change our plans at any moment. We keep working out tentative itineraries for the remaining time we have left and then flip things around and decide to do something else entirely. It’s kind of nice to have it be this flexible, although we have made reservations for two nights in Dublin at the end, just to make sure we’d have rooms.

And this is why today we ended up having a rather relaxing day strolling around Galway instead of driving off to another historic site as originally planned. The rain finally stopped and a few moments during the afternoon we actually caught glimpses of blue sky up there amid all those clouds.

Once again, our timing seemed to work out well, since there’s a little farmer’s market in the pedestrian areas on Saturdays, and they were having a big musical event in the center of town to celebrate the grand reopening of Eyre Square (the recent renovation of which seems to still be a sore point, based on the comments a few people have made).

Our host gave us a lift to town since he was heading in the same time we set out, so he dropped us right at the corner of the square and then, armed with two maps that were both actually useful (a rare thing in city maps, we’ve discovered), we set off to do a bit of exploring.

The little farmer’s market is set up in a narrow little pedestrian-only alley behind Saint Nicholas Cathedral, whose claim to fame is that Columbus supposedly attended services there before he set off to find a new route to India and got a bit lost on the way. One of the booth vendors suggested we go inside and wander around, so we did, picking up one of the very helpful brochures that highlighted a number of the more interesting bits of the interior, including actual gargoyles above the windows.

The farmer’s market itself wasn’t very large, and a bit crowded, but we saw a cheese shop behind the stalls and on a whim decided to go inside. They very nicely allowed the gaping American tourists to take pictures of all the sausages and such hanging from the walls, and the stacks of cheese wheels just sitting on counters and shelves. My boss had mentioned that Ireland has some really good cheeses (since I love cheese) but we’d not found anywhere to test that theory until today. The very friendly young woman behind the counter was more than willing to offer us a few samples, and package up four selections of various local cheeses for us to purchase for later.

We decided that bread and cheese would make a marvelous lunch, so we picked up a round loaf of the brown soda bread that’s so popular over here. And our final purchase in the market was at the donut booth, where a man was making fresh donuts, which he would whisk out of the fryer and coat in sugar with either a sprinkling of cocoa or cinnamon. I couldn’t resist the allure of freshly baked donuts, so we each got one, and they tasted even better than they looked.

Galway seems a newer city, even though it’s old enough to have had a large stone wall around the city (back when it was much smaller) – the streets are wider and it just seems more open and less cramped than some of the places we’ve been. One of the locals we spoke to noted that there is always something going on in Galway, and that certainly seems to be the case, based on the lists of upcoming events we saw posted here and there. We also passed a number of street performers, including one young man done up all in grey who was doing an extremely good imitation of a statue (he would only move, very briefly, if someone tossed coins into his hat), and a pair of young women who were playing the guitar and singing, and joined by a very young boy in tails and top hat who was very good at working the crowd for donations.

We ate our lunch in Eyre Square while they were doing final preparation for the big musical celebration, perching on cement walls and eating our bread and cheese. We wandered through the streets as the sounds of Big Band tunes wafted by (you have not heard Big Band music until you have heard Mac the Knife sung with an Irish accent) and I found another store with another sweater’s worth of wool that had to come home with me. We made our way through the Eyre Center, which is a shopping mall built, quite literally, around a large chunk of the old city wall, including two of the watchtowers which have been renovated and serve as little shops. One of them, in fact, held a fortune teller, which amused me far more than it probably should. And we picked up packing boxes on our way back to the B&B, which I proceeded to stuff full of yarn and other things we’ve bought which won’t fit in the suitcases and need to be shipped home.

We headed back into Galway later in the evening to find dinner. Richard decided he wanted to go off and find somewhere with local music, but I stayed back in the B&B, mainly because this afternoon he discovered that there is a wireless network somewhere in the vicinity we can tap into. So I’ve spent an hour or two catching up on two weeks worth of journals and email and news, looking up possible B&B’s for our next destination, and checking weather forecasts for the next few days. All fingers crossed here, but it looks as if we might get to see that bright shiny thing in the sky tomorrow too.

Pictures from Galway are here.

Pretty much everyone we met in Ennis, as soon as they figured out we were tourists (the lack of an Irish accent and the clutching of maps and guidebooks were their first clues), asked us if we had been to see the Cliffs of Moher, or if we were planning on it. One gets the distinct sense that the Cliffs of Moher are a very big deal. And they are such a big deal that they were already on our agenda for today.

By the time we were nearing the cliffs, the fog started rolling in, and by the time we reached the parking lot, it was nearly impossible to see much of anything at all. But yet we still tried. In fact I took great amusement in the fact that the area was completely crowded with great hordes of other tourists who were all being just as determined. There is a bit of a hike up to the viewing area for the cliffs, and we all trudged up toward them, continuing on despite the fog because – and I can only assume here – we were all paying 4 Euros for the damn parking lot, so we might as well do the hike.

The cliffs are amazing. Really. See?

Or in other words, so much for seeing anything at all through that fog! To compensate for the lack of pictures of the Cliffs of Moher, we give you, instead, this. Ha ha ha! Okay, so this was all Richard’s idea. You tend to get a bit punchy when you’ve been traipsing around in the damp for days on end.

Luckily the fog lifted as we turned a bit more inland. We stopped in Kilfenora to see the Burren Information Center, which included a short video about the landscape of the Burren, and also a little museum that covered the history of human inhabitants in the Burren. Next to the center was a tiny little cathedral with a small collection of high crosses and some interesting carved bishop heads over one of the doors. And after a few wrong turns, we finally made it into the Burren and even found the Poulnabrone Dolmen.

The Burren is this bizarre landscape made up of limestone that’s been worn away into ridges and miniature canyons and lakes by thousands of years of weather. For all that the ground is nearly all rock, there is still an abundance of greenery, and much was made of the fact that there are arctic and Mediterranean plants growing side by side in these areas, many of them in an environment that they should never have been seen in. Some of the landscape – primarily the hills – is terraced from glacial movements thousands of years ago. It is certainly different than the rest of the Irish landscape we’ve seen, but I guess maybe we were expecting – based on what we’d read and what the video said – that it would be more bleak and barren.

We continued meandering through the Burren until suddenly there were green lush fields right next to the rocks and we could see the ocean again, and eventually we made our way to Galway and began the task of trying to track down our B&B (always a fun experience). We did stop in a tiny little town by the ocean so Richard could call to get directions (and while he was on the phone I finally met another friendly Irish cat – a portly old calico who was more than happy to get attention from someone), but the owner didn’t give anything more than an address, and told him to just head for Salt Hill. So off we went through horrid traffic that wound its way through the center of Galway until we found signs for Salt Hill, and from there, it got even more fun. The B&B is on White Strand Avenue, and when they were planning this particular section of the town, someone decided that it would be infinitely amusing to name every single street White Strand. I am not kidding. There was White Strand Street, White Strand Park, White Strand Road, and White Strand Avenue, and to make it even more exciting, at least two of them ended in places and then continued on somewhere else.

But we did finally find the place, although I suspect we’re going to need to map out exactly how we can get back here again, since we’re using this as a base for exploring the city, the surrounding area, and the Aran Islands. There’s a very touristy little strip of shops and restaurants not too far away, that make up Salthill Village (it’s very much a summer holiday type town) and we quickly found an internet cafe, a place for dinner – a Slavic restaurant with delicious food – and a laundrette (since this is the last place we’ll be anywhere long enough to accumulate enough clean clothes to last us until we fly home). So assuming that we can occasionally find our way back to the B&B without getting horribly lost, I think we’re nicely settled for the next few days.

Pictures from Kilfenora, The Burren.