Ireland, Part 2: For the Beauty of the Earth...

On the second day of our trip to Ireland, I woke up ridiculously early. Ridiculously early meant leaving the hostel at 6:15 and trekking about a mostly empty Dublin looking for someplace that might be open and serving something breakfast before our tour. What we found was McDonald’s. Another staple of American life, which I have not been into since leaving home, though I have missed it (never mind that there’s one right near my flat. I have been resisting!).

I will stop here for a moment to discuss the…novelty, I guess, of European McDonald’s. At home, McDonald’s is a slightly cheesy, often low-class, cheap restaurant. They do the plastic and vinyl seat thing. In Europe, McDonald’s is a thing of beauty. They are several stories tall (this one was 4), have table service (mostly you get your food at the counter, but they clear your table for you when they notice your done, or bus it after you leave), and are very trendy in their decorating schemes. No cheesy yellow and red here! I swear, there’s hardwood floors in there! And this one had a chandelier. No. Joke.

Anyway, yes, breakfast of porridge and sliced apples obtained, we headed off to our tour’s meeting point. Our tour van was a bright, turqoisey color that would be hard to miss even in a blackout, and our tour guide was a wild-haired Irishman named Cat (“but I also answer to Santa Clause, Werewolf, Hairy-Face…whatever you want.”) whom I swear is Gandalf’s brother or something.

(Photo taken by Tyler Fouche)

After hopping into our van, joined by a loud contingent of mafia playing Spaniards and a couple other odds-n-ends, we set off for Limerick.

(Photo below taken by Tyler Fouche) Limerick is a very cute little town, in which I saw my First Ever Castle: St. John’s Castle. It’s located right next to a bridge and the Shannon River, and was quite lovely in its castle-ness. Cat dropped us off and drove across the bridge while we wandered around taking pictures and posing in front of the castle doors. The setting was very picturesque, and even included two lovely swans swimming about the castle’s base. After taking a million pictures (because my FIRST CASTLE!!!), we set off across the bridge.

The bridge is apparently very special. Legend has it that if you are single, and cross the bridge by hopping on one foot, you will have good luck with the opposite gender. Tyler and Tracey, being newly married, really didn’t feel the need to participate, but Hannah and I did definitely tried it. That bridge, which isn’t really very long, seems about a million times longer when you are hopping across it, let me tell you! And neither of us were very good at it, really (meaning we so didn’t make it all the way by actually hopping—there was definitely some cheating via skipping, switching feet, and walking with really big steps involved), but it was fun to try! We also got a quick glimpse of an old stone abbey (the first church in Limerick), then it was off to the real point of the tour: the Cliffs of Moher.

There are no words to describe the cliffs. Beautiful, gorgeous, and all similar synonyms certainly apply, but this is really one of those times where the English language doesn’t have the words to portray how truly awesome the cliffs are. It’s no wonder they form the backdrop of famous scenes from a hundred different movies. I am in awe of God’s creation. His sense of beauty is clearly beyond imagining, and I feel so blessed that He created such beautiful places and then chose to gift me with the opportunity to see some of them. I just wanted to stand there and have a devo all day!

Obviously, we spent ages taking pictures. The fact that it was cold and so windy that the strongest gusts nearly knocked me over really didn’t bother us much under the circumstances. There’s a wall a bit back from the edge of the cliffs, so you can’t get to close and fall over, so we weren’t too worried about it. And the view was so fantastic…

We headed up the path a ways to O’Brien’s tower where the view is even better. And for two Euros, you can climb to the top of the tower for an even better view. Best of all, it is possible to climb up on the roof of the stairwell, and get a completely unimpeded view all the way around. Now technically you aren’t supposed to (oops! We honestly didn’t see the sign until after the fact), and it probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do with winds as string as that (yeah, couple of scary moments there). But it was…so worth it.

We spent about an hour or so at the cliffs. It wasn’t enough time to hike down to see the puffin colony that lives there (Sad! Next time I’m in Ireland, puffins. Your cute little selves are definitely on my to do list!), but it was more than enough time to take millions of pictures, and just…marvel.

By this time, we were starving, so we headed off to Doolin for lunch. Our tour guide took us on a brief detour to the harbor for a different view of the cliffs. We spend ten minutes taking jumping pictures on the shore (Hello, Atlantic Ocean! We’ve never met face-to-face before!), and looking at the Aran Islands, which are visible from that point (first language on these tiny islands: Gaelic!). Lunch was a yummy seafood chowder at Fitzpatrick’s pub, where we ran into Stefani and her friend, who happened to be doing a similar tour!

After lunch we took a trip to the Burren. The Burren is a place with flat rocks and cliffs, and spongy grass, near Galway harbor. It looks a lot like the lava fields in Hawaii might in a bajillion years, when things start to grow there again and the rocks are worn smooth by the weather. It’s beautiful too, in a strange sort of way. The tour of this area was wonderful. We saw a lot of the Irish country driving around here, including a bunch of B&Bs, and the ruins of several old penal houses. There is some kind of superstition about these houses, apparently, because the locals won’t knock them down. They might put a cow inside them, in hopes the cow will do so, but they themselves will not destroy these houses. In fact, one guy even built himself a new house, with a pretty new lawn, and actually left a carved out hollow space in that lovely new landscaping around the ruins sitting in his front yard.

Our next stop was Corcomroe Abbey, an old stone abbey built in 1142 (the third oldest building I’ve ever been in!). The abbey is roofless now, but the towering stone walls are still standing, and the interior is full of interesting old tombs. It’s no longer used as an abbey, but the graveyard outside is still in use.

Our final stop was Dunguaire Castle in Kinvara. It was a beautiful little castle, set on a small hill at the edge of the water, and is the coolest castle ever because they hold authentic medieval banquets there twice a week! There was even one scheduled for the night we were there, and we wanted to stay, but we couldn’t.