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.

We lingered in Killarney a little this morning, mainly because the laundrette didn’t open until 9:30. So while we waited, we stopped by the Tourist Office, and then headed for the yarn store, which we’d found last night but wasn’t open.

It’s a tiny little place, not much bigger than the store in Trim, but the contrast here was that this place (Killarney Handicrafts) was well organized and clean and well-lit, and the place in Trim was kind of a scattered mess. And I finally found yarn! A 1kg bag of 100% Irish wool, in a deep purple wine color, which looks like it should be plenty to make a sweater. I suspect I’ll be pouring through my book of cables again sometime soon.

Next it was on to Ennis. Today the weather cleared up and so the drive was beautiful, since we could actually see out into the valleys (lots of sheep and cows). We’d originally planned to stop in Limerick to get lunch, but Limerick appears second only to Cork in complete confusion of streets, drivers, and all manner of other things guaranteed to make uninitiated drivers (and their passengers) nervous. In fact, at one point we passed a corner and there was a soldier standing in the middle of the street, complete with large gun. We’re not sure what’s in Limerick that’s so important it needs armed soldiers with guns, and we decided not to find out. So we somehow found a way out of the city and stopped at the first place we could saw to get lunch – a large restaurant that seemed as if it was built specifically to cater to tourists, but which offered huge portions at low prices, of good food.

Before reaching Ennis we took a slight detour and went off to Quin to see the ruins of Quin Abbey, and it was well worth it. First of all, it is completely free; second, it is the most well-preserved abbey in Ireland (actually it was a friary, and the guide there seemed a bit put out by the fact that the information signs out front had it wrong); third, the guide there was more than willing to answer any questions about the history of the place, and even took us off to see a few things, like the masonry mark on one of the stones, and the remains of what was apparently an extremely elaborate carving of Jesus on the cross. The cloisters in this friary are completely preserved so we could walk through them and really get a good sense of how it would have been when it was inhabited. Plus this particular location still had the second floor intact, so we were able to go up and wander through the dormitory areas that overlooked the cloister. There was a dark little crypt, and a door which appeared might lead into a tiny little mausoleum inside (peering through the holes we could see coffins) and as with so many of these sites, it was obvious from the gravestones that people are still being buried there.

The guide was a wealth of information, although I suspect that was partially driven by the fact that he was pretty bored with sitting in a tiny little booth all day. He gave us a nice broad overview of the Franciscans, and thanks to our chatting with him, we now know how to distinguish a Franciscan church from the others (it’s the ‘string lines’ that encircle the towers). We even managed to find a new (to him) carving above one of the doors. He thanked us when we were heading out, since he said that most people just wander in and out in just a few minutes and don’t seem to be willing to take the time to ask questions or get to know anything about the place.

Our next stop was to Craggaunowen, which was along the same road as to the friary, and which proports to be a recreation of various structures throughout Ireland’s history. I suspect if we had not gone to the Irish National Heritage Park outside Wexford we might have been impressed, but in comparison, Craggaunowen was definitely second rate (plus it was nearly twice as expensive).

We finally made it to Ennis, and found our B&B with no difficulty at all. We checked in, and then immediately headed into town, where the woman at the tourist office handed over a map, rattled off a number of locations to see, and then noted that since they were having their big music festival this weekend, there was a ceilidh this very evening and everyone was welcome to come. Talk about stumbling into a town at the right time!

We had a rather uninspiring dinner at a local pub and wandered around a bit until we tracked down an internet cafe. It’s a nice town and I think this may be one of my favorite stops so far (the fact that it has not one, but two grocery stores, one of which is open 24 hours, has nothing to do with it!) and we both wish we’d been able to schedule a longer visit here.

The ceilidh didn’t start until 10pm, but when we got there the room was packed, and it was nice to see a wide range in ages (we’d been afraid we were going to be either the youngest, or the oldest). Then the music started and so did the dancing and good grief, no wonder the Irish are in such great shape if they do this kind of thing on any sort of regular basis. I was pulled into the second set of dances and my very helpful partner gave me quick clues as to what was coming up each time things changed, before we would go spinning madly in circles until I was getting a bit dizzy. I intended to sit the next set out, and had come back toward the main dancing area only to try to get some pictures of Richard out there on the floor but they needed a woman in another set, so off we went again. And it is exhausting. Kind of embarrassing to see people twice my age and older dancing about and not even breathing hard and here I was, struggling to keep up.

Richard’s asthma decided that being in a large, crowded room with poor air circulation wasn’t the best thing, and by then I was pretty exhausted myself, so we took it as the perfect excuse to go. Walking back to the B&B in the light sprinkling of rain was lovely, since the cool air really felt good after going through such a workout. We decided to put the ‘open 24 hours’ to the test and stopped by the grocery store on the way to pick up some traveling snacks, and then came back to the room to collapse.

If we come back to Ireland again (and I really hope we do) Ennis is definitely going onto our itinerary, and for more than a night. And if we can schedule it for the weekend of their music festival again, so much the better – although maybe next time Richard and I will have to do a bit of practicing before we attempt that kind of dancing again.

Pictures from Killarney, Quin ,Craggaunowen, and Ennis.

We decided to try to get onto the road as soon as possible this morning, since the guidebooks warned that going either early or really late was the best way to avoid getting stuck behind buses on the Ring of Kerry. I’m not sure if we were successful in that; we did end up getting stuck behind a few from time to time, but either we missed the majority of them, or there just weren’t that many on the road to begin with; either way, it wasn’t really a problem.

We weren’t the only ones wanting an early start, as evidenced by the fact that every guest in the B&B showed up for breakfast as early as we did. We ended up sitting with a mother and daughter traveling together, so the four of us had fun talking about getting lost on the roads traveling around Ireland.

The route along the Ring is gorgeous, of course – all rocky hills and lakes and the occasional ruin of a stone building here and there. The more open areas looked almost desolate at times – only a house here and there, amid the lines of the crumbling stone walls, but then you’d round a corner and be confronted with bright splashes of color, making it clear you were entering a town well used to the traffic of tourists. Pastel paints for the buildings along the main streets of the towns along the Ring were the norm.

We followed the Ring for the most part down the northernmost leg of the route, stopping very briefly in the first town to get some coffee (since my sinuses decided that ten days without a flare-up was more than long enough and decided to attack with a vengeance. Alas, their plans to ruin my day were thwarted, since I came prepared with plenty of sinus meds, but I needed something to wash the pill down). That particular stop was a bit interesting. We stopped at a tiny little combination gas station / grocery store, and I asked if they had a restroom I could use. The guy I was talking to hesitated and looked meaningfully at a man and his daughter who were just leaving the store; only when they were out of earshot did he tell me that they were having to screen who they allowed to use the store’s restrooms. I didn’t quite follow the whole explanation, due to the heavy accent, but Richard got more out of them later. It turns out that a caravan of gypsies had moved into town the night before (we passed their campers as we drove out of town) and they didn’t want them to be coming in and milling about in the back where the restrooms were located. This also explained why it was that as we drove into town, a number of the parking lots had cars parked so that they blocked the entrance. I assume this was to prevent the gypsies from deciding to move camp into those lots (they’d set up camp in parking lots across from the store where we stopped).

We took a few detours away from the main route fo the ring on the advice of the guidebook, and weren’t disappointed either time. The first was a detour toward Portmagee, to go to the Skellig Information Center, which included some displays about the lighthouses in the area, and a short film on the tiny little monastery established in the 600’s by Saint Finnian on Skellig Michael. The skelligs themselves are tiny little islands not really meant to be inhabited by humans, since they’re steep and extremely rocky and mostly serve as habitats for birds and a few species of extremely tenacious plants. But they’re isolated and inhospitable and thus must have been completely irresistible to the monks, since at that time monks were big into that kind of thing. So they established a tiny little colony on the top of the largest one, which still stands, many structures still intact even though it was eventually abandoned by the 12th century. There are tiny little stone huts, and fences, and of course a little chapel, and through sheer determination and who knows how many years of hard work they also constructed hundreds of steps out of stone up to their little rocky perch.

We next followed the Ring of Skellig through Portmagee and up an extremely steep and narrow little road to what one of the guides at the Information Center told us was the highest point one could get in Ireland by car. He also noted rather apologetically that the views were gorgeous from up there, when it wasn’t raining. Ah well. As we came down the other side of the hill we could see a full view of that area of the peninsula, and off in the distance, barely visible through the mists, were the skelligs.

One of the reasons for taking this particular detour off the main Ring road was to visit the Skellig Chocolate Factory, which is just a bit south of Ballinskellig. It’s a tiny little white building that looks nothing at all like a factory, but inside, there was the heavenly aroma of chocolate, and behind the counter there were four or five women all busy with various phases of chocolate production. One stopped when she saw us and proceeded to lay out samples of their entire line of truffles and brittles and then rattled off a string of items and prices. The chocolates were delicious – not too sweet (a big plus for me since I prefer dark chocolate to milk) and the flavors all subtle enough to not overwhelm. So naturally we had to buy a tin of assorted truffles, because one does not pass up on handmade chocolates, especially at those prices. Yum!

We rejoined the Ring at Waterville, where we also stopped to get lunch (or rather, a snack) at a cute little shop that seemed as if it had been set up in someone’s living room. The shop served a variety of scones and cakes, as well as coffee and tea, so we had coffee and cake and enjoyed the chance to just sit somewhere that wasn’t in a moving vehicle.

We took one more detour on our drive around the Ring; this one to see Staigue Fort. It’s an old Ringfort that was built more than 2000 years ago, which is kind of awe-inspiring right there, to walk into something that’s been around such a long time. It’s only reachable up an extremely windy and narrow road- perhaps the narrowest road we’ve been on, since it really was only wide enough for one car, yet was meant for two-way traffic. It was easy enough to find, though, and while the sign on the gate said we were to pay a ‘trespassing’ fee, we couldn’t figure out where, or to whom, we were supposed to offer money, so we just gave up and went in. We were met by an extremely talkative sheep, who followed us to the entrance to the fort, and then proceeded to share his opinion with us pretty much the entire time we were inside.

The fort itself consists of just the outer stone wall; any dwellings inside would have obviously long ago disappeared. But it’s an amazing thing to see, if only because the entire thing was built using the dry wall method – stones piled on top of each other, and no mortar at all. The walls at their highest stood about 6 meters tall and were about 4 meters thick, plus they’d worked in stairways and platforms all around the inner side, obviously meant so that people could climb up and look out (sentries, or soldiers, perhaps).

After the fort we rejoined the Ring once again and continued along it back to Killarney. The road passes through Killarney National Park, and there were some places to stop and enjoy the amazing views of the lakes and valleys, but by this time we had realized that both of us were in desperate need of getting some laundry done, and if we went directly back to Killarney we might still have a shot at getting to a place before they closed. So we zipped back into the B&B, got directions from the owner for the closest location, which turned out to be a dry cleaners, but they pointed us somewhere else, and after circling through the main part of town a few times, we eventually tracked it down and I dashed inside and dropped off bags of laundry while Richard stayed in the car and pretended he was a taxi (we had to park in the taxi queue). We won’t be able to pick it up again until tomorrow morning, but the timing still works out so that it shouldn’t cause too many delays on our way north.

So now it’s off to dinner, and to some more wandering around Killarney. Rumor has it that there are actually more than one stores in town where I might find yarn, and Richard’s on the lookout for some books, so as long as the rain doesn’t get any worse than it is, I think we’ll have fun.

Pictures are uploaded (not very many today) from our tour of the Ring of Kerry.

It was kind of a relief to leave Cork this morning, especially since we could do it without having to actually go through the town center again. We headed south at first, toward the coast, and just past Kinsale we found Charles Fort. It’s a star-shaped fort that was built right on the edge of a cliff in the 16th century, but it’s in amazingly good shape because it was actually in use until the early 1900’s, when it was torched during the civil war in Ireland.

It started raining pretty hard when we got there, so our tour guide spent quite a bit of time going over the history of the fort, as well as the history of some of the politics of Ireland, back to the whole skirmish between William of Orange and James the First. It was quite interesting, although I couldn’t even begin to remember all the details of the whole history, but the important thing is that the whole schism between the Protestants and the Catholics, all leading up to the civil war in the early 1900’s and the continuing skirmishes are all finally making sense, especially considering that there are hundreds of years of history involved in their making.

Our guide had a dry, quiet sense of humor, and was quite entertaining to listen to. He led us around the fort a bit once the rain had subsided to just a drizzle and walked us through the building where they kept the gunpowder, the barracks, the officer’s quarters, and even the hospital, which had a maternity wing that was birthing babies up until 1922.

We ended up spending pretty much all morning there, but it was definitely worth it. There was an interactive exhibit about how the fort was designed and built, and also how it was defeated. We also got to wander around the fort quite a bit on our own, finding dark, damp storerooms and sallyports and climbing up on the bastions to look out over the water below.

We headed back north, toward Blarney, figuring that since we were going that way we might as well swing by the castle and see what all the fuss is about. It’s privately owned, so not covered by our handy Heritage cards, and while it’s a nice big tower of a castle and the grounds were pretty, we were actually a bit disappointed because the whole focus seems to be on climbing to the top in order to kiss that ridiculous stone (we didn’t kiss it, in case that wasn’t obvious). There was a cave and some dungeons open to go into, but they weren’t lit, so anyone without a flashlight was out of luck (that included us, unfortunately), and there were no guided tours, so we didn’t get any sense of history or background about the place at all, unlike at the other castles we’ve seen. Ah well.

So after that we just headed straight for Killarney, where we managed to find our B&B with a minimum of trouble. Killarney is obviously a tourist town, since most of the stores in the town center were open even by the time we got there, which was after 7pm. We ate dinner at a place recommended by one of our guidebooks, and I had a boxty, which is sort of like a thick crepe made from grated potatoes, stuffed with chicken and veggies, and then sticky toffee pudding cake, because this is the first place I’ve seen it and I was really curious to see if the one I made for our impromptu Saint Patrick’s day dinner back in March was anything like the ‘real thing’. If taste and appearance is anything to go by, the recipe I used was the real deal. Yay for me!

Pictures are available from Charles Fort and from Blarney.

This morning when I went to go wash my face, I discovered that there was only a dribble of water coming out of the tap. At first I assumed that it was just that their pressure was bad, since there were likely other guests using the showers at that time, but when we mentioned it to one of our hostesses at breakfast she noted that actually it wasn’t just our room; it was the whole town. And the way she talked about it, it sounded as if this was not the first time this sort of thing has happened, since they’d been prepared with a huge container of water for a back-up (to at least have enough for coffee and tea). Luckily we weren’t in need of water, so it wasn’t anything more than a slightly amusing little diversion, but I got the impression that a few of the other guests weren’t so lucky (or understanding).

We headed south again, this time to Cork, or rather, to slightly west of Cork, to the Fota Wildlife Park, which is located on the former grounds of the Fota estate. I knew it was the sort of place where the animals were free to roam at will, but I’d expected, somehow, for it to be a drive-through kind of park. It is actually a walk-through sort of park, even though yes, some of the animals are allowed to just roam about the park at will. They do a lot of conservation and species restoration work there, apparently; hence the presence of both white and black swans, about a dozen cheetahs, a huge herd of giraffe, the European bison, and too many varieties of duck and other waterfowl to count. Most of the waterfowl were allowed to just roam free, but the park also had peacocks, some kind of shaggy llama-type equines (guanaco), various deer, several little kangaroo families, and a whole herd of these strange little critters that looks like a cross between a rabbit and a deer (and which turned out later to be a mara, which is some kind of giant guinea pig relation from South America). But the very best thing of all they had roaming free, and the reason why I was so determined for us to go there in the first place, were the ring-tailed lemurs.

It is important at this point that I note that lemurs are some of my very favorite animals (second only to cats, of course) and that the highlight of every trip we take to the San Francisco zoo is the lemur island, and that if I could have a chance to interact with any other critter in the world (besides, of course, cats), it would be lemurs. So naturally I was a bit excited about the chance to see lemurs up close, maybe swinging right over our heads or curled up just out of reach beside the path. When we finally spotted a little cluster of ring-tailed lemurs they were, in fact, hanging out in special little perches quite obviously designed just for them, and they were only a few feet away so I was quite happy to be able to just get some good shots of them. But then. Then! Across the path another ring-tailed lemur came scampering, directly at us. It paused, pondered our feet for a moment, and then stretched up and leaned one tiny little paw very lightly against my leg for just a moment, staring right up at me. I know exactly why it did this – earlier we’d run into someone who had been to the park before and recounted a tale of lemurs making off with parts of people’s lunches, so obviously this little guy was hoping I might be carrying something tasty I would be willing to share. But I really didn’t care *why* the lemur decided to come over and pat me on the leg; I only care that it did! A lemur! I’ve been a bit giddy about it ever since.

We got to see a tiny family of squirrel monkeys come skittering past us on the fence rail, which was pretty amazing, since they came within about two feet of where we were standing. They have such a high-pitched squeak of voice, and they’re really adorable. We also got to see a number of the cheetahs. They were caged, and not roaming free (go figure) but still obviously comfortable enough around people that they were perfectly willing to hang out near the front of their enclosure. In fact the first enclosure we passed, there were four of them, all piled on top of each other, taking a nap.

After the zoo we had a quick lunch at the little lunch counter in the Fota House (and I think it may have been the smallest lunch we’ve had in Ireland yet – portions here tend to be huge), then took a leisurely stroll around the gardens. They’ve been restored and the arboretum has all kinds of trees from all over the world.

Next it was on to Blarney. Neither of us has any desire to go kiss the Blarney Stone (just the thought of voluntarily touching something with my lips that hundreds of thousands of other people have also touched with their lips makes me queasy), but I’d seen signs for the Blarney Woollen Mills and our map noted that the one in Blarney was the largest (“The Premier Irish Shopping Experience” it was called) so we decided to stop in. And it certainly is large – three floors of mostly sweaters and such, but lots of other Irish-made things for sale. And here I finally found some yarn for sale, such as it was (one type of yarn, one small table), and while it was a fantastic price, I didn’t want to buy yarn just for the sake of buying yarn without having a project idea in mind, so I bought no yarn at all.

We thought about trying to get to the castle just to walk around, but decided instead to head back to Cork and try to find our B&B. And what a nightmare driving in Cork is! The narrow little roads we were navigating in the countryside, where they were only a bit wider than one car, but still allowed two-way traffic, were bad enough, but driving in Cork is kind of insane. The roads are still narrow, and while there is a line painted down the middle so that they would fit two cars going opposite directions, this only works if the streets are clear – and they were not. People just park wherever – sometimes even up on the sidewalk (if there is one), so with the parked cars the roads were down to only wide enough for one car, and yet, still, two way traffic. Add to this the fact that the only maps we could track down for Cork were for the city center (and most of the streets on the map were unnamed because identifying streets might actually be *helpful*), and our B&B is most definitely not in the city center, and we were starting to get stressed. We tracked down a phone booth at one point to try to get directions but had no luck getting ahold of anyone, so started asking random strangers, who at least got us pointed in the right direction. And then we stopped at a pharmacy to see if someone there might be able to help us, and met the nicest elderly gentleman who overheard our conversation with the clerk, and volunteered to lead us there himself. They may not be able to create maps that provide any assistance, but the people here more than make up for it – everyone we have met has been nothing but friendly.

Our B&B is in the middle of what is obviously a newer neighborhood (‘newer’ as in the sense that the streets actually are mostly labeled somewhere where you might actually see the sign when driving on them – a novel concept in a lot of places, it seems) and within walking distance of all the important amenities – places to find dinner, an internet access point (located in a large video and music store), a grocery store so we can restock our supply of traveling snacks, a gas station, and an ATM. And also a phone booth, which turned out to be important later, since when trying to pay for dinner Richard’s card was refused, and as we found out, even though I specifically called our bank to make sure they flagged our account so they would *not* assume that all these sudden purchases in Ireland were fraudulent, they didn’t bother to note this for Richard’s card, they only flagged it for mine. Luckily we cleared it up, and did find a little humor in it later, since it was about this far into his trip that this happened to him the last time he came to Ireland.

Pictures from Fota.

Today has been all about moldy ruins. Literally. We got up early so we could track down a phone booth and make our reservations for the next few nights (in fact, last night we sat down and mapped out a general plan for the rest of our trip), and it was already raining hard enough to require jackets and umbrellas. Directly after breakfast we piled into the car and off we went down the road, in the rain, toward our first heap of moldy rocks.

First stop – Cahir Castle, in Cahir. It’s one of the most complete castles in the country, since it remained in the (you guessed it) Butler family until the last one died in the 1960’s, and they did their best to keep it from falling down around them. I don’t remember exactly when this particular castle was built, but it was famous for falling to the Earl of Essex back in the time of Elizabeth I (although amusingly, the Butler family got it back less than a year later because those Butlers, they are a surprisingly tenacious family when it comes to their castles), and this particular attack was notable because it was the only time the castle had fallen – and it only fell because they used guns (in fact, there is a cannonball still stuck in one of the tower walls).

We got a short guided tour, but most of the time we were there, we were just allowed to wander on our own, with a simple admonition to just please be careful because the rain made things slippery. Um. Yes. We very carefully climbed the open stair to the ramparts, and avoided a few of the other staircases, one of which was literally just some stones sticking out from the wall. The stairs to the prison tower were also unprotected and slippery, but we braved them anyway.

And I wasn’t kidding about the mold. The main room we could go into in the prison tower was so heavy with mold that the air reeked of it, and the windows in the banquet hall were bright green with growth. No wonder the people in those days suffered from so many respiratory problems!

After the castle, we headed North to Cashel, primarily to see the Rock of Cashel. In fact, we can see the Rock from the window of our B&B room, which is positively spacious compared to the teeny little room in the place in Waterport (for one thing, neither of us will end up having to sleep on the floor!). We dumped off our bags, found one of the only places open for lunch on a Sunday and joined crowds of other people squashing into the little restaurant to get out of the rain.

The rock is quite impressive once you get inside it, especially the sheer size of the cathedral. We listened to a short presentation about the history of the Rock, and then got to wander about at will. I’m not sure if it was the rain, or the day (Sunday) but there weren’t very many people there at all, so we could poke about as much as we wanted.

The presentation mentioned the Hore Abbey, which was built for the monks at some point in the history of the Rock, and it was visible in the distance from the Rock (to be fair, *everything* is visible in the distance from the Rock – it doesn’t take much to figure out just why someone decided this was a good place to build a fortress), and there were signs pointed toward it, so once we were done wandering the Rock, we set off for the Abbey, through the mud and the rain, down a steep hill, and then down a road until there it was, sitting there all abandoned and covered in moss, smack in the middle of a field of cows. Literally. In fact, we had to walk through the field of cows to get to the abbey, and when we got there, there were only two other people in the ruins, and they left shortly after we arrived, so we had the whole thing to ourselves.

Having gone through Jerpoint and having been given all the information by the fabulous tourguide there, we could now easily pick out various parts of the abbey and figure out about where things were and what they might have been used for. This particular abbey was missing most of the cloister, but had more areas where you could see the outer buildings that surrounded the inner gardens.

By this time the rain was finally letting up, although it continued to sprinkle on and off the rest of the day. So we headed back to town and stopped into the Tourist Information office, to find out if there might be anything in town actually open late enough to serve dinner on a Sunday (exactly one place, it turned out). Luckily it was just about a block away from the B&B, since by this time I wasn’t sure how much more walking around I could take, and even though the tiny little place was packed, we were able to get seats at the bar pretty quickly, and they were willing to serve us there. The food was delicious, and it was actually kind of fun to sit at the bar, since we got to watch their system in action. The kitchens were obviously on the next floor up, so the had a little food elevator built into the wall; dirty dishes would go in, and scraps of paper with orders written on them; plates of food would come back down.

We came back to the B&B and decided to just relax for the rest of the evening. There’s a few chairs in the little landing near our room, so we went out there and I did a bit of knitting and Richard read and did some writing, before finally heading into our room (again – a nice change from the cramped conditions of the place in Waterford!). From our window we can see the Rock, where they’ve got it lit up for the night. We turned on the television and ended up finding a British film that had enough gentle humor to make it enjoyable, since both of us are to tired for anything requiring actual thought.

Pictures from Cahir and Cashel.