Hopefully a better day today, had a reasonably good nights sleep in the Menlo Park – and was up at around 7:00. Shower and sorted, and down for yet another full breakfast, I really should say NO! But I am far too greedy. So bacon, black and white pudding, mushrooms, ham, cheese, sausage, toast and rolls. Greedy greedy. Got Kate a sausage and bacon tiny roll, then we were away and checking out.
After a bit of a faff with the Sat Nav, we headed east from Galway and then south towards the Burrens. This is basically the same as the brecon beacons only in Ireland, and with extra stones. But the first part of the trip was great – another coast road which really skirted the mountain and ocean. We stopped in a little pull in and examined the cliff face, which wasn’t, so we scrambled down it towards the sea. As it was a pretty nice day the waves were mediocre, it would have been very impressive on a stormy day. Continuing around the cliffs we arrived at Doolin which was supposed to be great – we must have taken the wrong road through it (there only seemed to be one) as we saw nothing but a street of nondescript houses and a couple of “pubs”. Don’t know what we missed, but Doolin was supposed to be good – we didn’t see the good side some how. We continued around the coast until we got to the Cliffs of Moher. These are some cliffs, you have to pay 6 euos each to view. From a bit of a distance thanks to elf and safety. They were pretty impressive, but you have to stay so far from the edge that we don’t really get the real magnitude of the sheerness. You could see where they probably used to let visitors go, which was a flat top of one of the cliffs which went right to the edge – no chance now. It would be amazing if they got one of those glass viewing platforms there have on the Grand Canyon (I think it’s there?). As with all of Ireland they had WiFi, and Chinese with cameras.
From the coast we made our way east to Ennis, nothing much to write home about on the journey, but Ennis town was pretty good. Small enough to be compact and with a great variety of shops/pubs and eateries. It was covered in buntings and was very pleasant. Kate choose our lunch and we must have gone to the Ireland Pizza Express franchise, the place was identical, but was called Milanos. I cannot believe it was a rip off (and subsequent googling and shown it is a Pizza Express, but they are not allowed to use that name). It was nice.
From Ennis we meandered a bit, but headed to Quin, where we looked at an Abbey and some Irish jobsworth told Kate off for standing on the stone frame of a doorway – something that had been there for 700 years and had survived all of those feet. We nipped in a pub here, which was completely empty, apart from the serving woman, it was a nice looking pub, and probably gets rammed in the evenings.. From here we lost our way a bit, and in reality we headed for Limerick to get an early checkin as Kate was desperate for a swim. Sian and Kate went for one whilst I type this…
After swimming we set off for the town and it poured down, then we couldn’t find a pub – in the whole of Limerick, I thought every other shop would be a pub, but we struggled to find one – as usual I asked an old dude on the corner and through his incoherent mumblings he pointed to a pub, just 10 meters away. Flannerys, we bought a pint and sat down next to the most sweary women in the world. She was at the bar, and we were by the window, but every third word was f&*k. She was using it like others might use a um, or ur. The rain had stopped, so we headed off to find another pub, which we found some way away – this one bizarrely was also called Flannerys – not sure if they are related, or that every pub in Limerick was a Flannerys. Off to nosh then in the Texas SteakOut, which was nice but very very rich, and the chicken was too hot for Kate – but 60 euros wasn’t too bad. Back to hotel then and up the glass elevator, which is not so scary in the night time, and I went to get my camera to take a night shot – I obviously do not know how to do that so the shot was rubbish – I think you probably need a tripod for evening work.
Coast road – 7/10
Cliffs – 8/10 (experience – 6/10)
Doolin – 1/10
Ennis – 7/10
Lunch – 9/10
Quin – 6/10
Limerick – 6/10
Shower – 6/10