Out and About

Hello hello! It's nice and early in the morning here, so I'm eager to write all this down and then get some sleep. And I can somewhat sleep in tomorrow--delicious!

So today Alice, Courtney, and I went on a tour of the Cliffs of Moher, the Burren, and several stops in County Clare with Lally Tours. It was really fun and the tour guide/bus driver was awesome. The videos at the bottom are mostly taken from inside the bus while driving to record the funny stories from the guide. The film is a little shaky, but his accent makes up for it! He's about average--some people, like my suitemates, have thicker accents than him, and some have more mild ones.

Wow--it just took me an hour to get all of these pictures on here. And this is only a quarter of the ones that we collectively took! I was planning on organizing them a little better here, but I think I'm just going to explain what each one is in the order they came up so I don't have to fiddle with this for another hour. Bear with me!

Okay: so to start off, this is the three of us at the Cliffs of Moher, a 5-mile stretch of sheer cliffs on the West Coast. You can see the Aran Islands from here quite easily, especially on beautiful days like today (we got so lucky).
And us at the coast of the Burren; once again, the Aran Islands are in the background. Notice the stone walls too. They are absolutely all over the country. The guide explained that people used them to demarcate what was their property since stones are very abundant in this country.
On the bus before we left at 10:30.
The lower staircase of the tower at the Cliffs of Moher. Before we got yelled at by a guy who wanted money.
A prehistoric burial tomb. Studies by archaeologists have shown that the remains of a family found here are about 5,000 years old.
It's like a window--and it is amazing that's it's still standing after all these years. It's protected today by lots of rope blocking off the area and some random guy standing around to watch us all.
Near the tomb, the rocks are very irregular. It took some work not to fall!

Just a random, funky rock near the tomb. There are tons of these pieces around the coast. At first glance I thought they were bales of hay, but then I realized that they were definitely rocks.
Some people today still use thatched roofs. In fact, many of the newer buildings we passed had thatched roofs so that they could try to reclaim their heritage.
At the Cliffs of Moher, the gift shop and museum is embedded in the hill. Our guide remarked that it looked like the home of the Teletubbies, and, unfortunately, he was right. This is the map of everything that's underground.
The main entrance to the Cliffs of Moher center.
And some shops on the side.
Lots of stone walls around here, like I said before.
And more stone walls. I tried to get a good picture of the countryside, which is completely crisscrossed with all of these mossy stone walls, but it's hard to do that from a bus seat.
I can't imagine trying to drive around by myself. These are only half the signs at this intersection. I sat next to them for 30 minutes, and still have no idea where to go next based on these directions.
The sign from the burial tomb.
A sign from one of our stops. Can you read it?
Maybe this translation will help.
This is really random in here (like I said, pictures are not in great order): it's Galway's city center. At 5 p.m. Saturday night. There are soooo many people around, and apparently no set rules about where and what side of the road you are supposed to walk on. The worst was all of the middle school and high school kids running around on their day off. They're everywhere!
Most of the shops are like this one: open fronts to the street and shallow areas for goods. However, some are surprisingly big inside. We got lost in one the other day after passing through a dozen rooms on three floors.
Sheep everywhere! And alpacas too...apparently they thrive here. Don't look too hard, though...there's only sheep in this picture.
A ruin behind the bar where we stopped for lunch.
The roads here are tiny and winding. Every time another car--or God forbid a tractor--came by, we had to pull to the side and let them go by first.

After a brief shower at the Cliffs of Moher, the sun came back out and treated us to a rainbow. We could see both ends, and at one point there were actually two rainbows. Very distinct.
See the second, lighter one off to the right?

I still can't get over the palm trees here. It just seems so odd.
The ocean was alive but beautiful today. This is at the Cliffs of Moher.
The ocean right off of the Burren.



This song was written on the side of the pub where we ate.





My candy-of-the-day. It was basically a Milky Way, which was perfectly okay since I like those. But I thought Mars bars were different...
Alice and I packed lunch, so we're killing time while we wait for Courtney to come out with her soup.
A beautiful view of the bay next to a castle.
The mysterious bubble here reminded us of the Loch Ness monster until we realized that we weren't in Scotland and that it was because of an underground spring. The original story was more interesting, though!
At the Cliffs. If you look closely enough, you can see who's taking my picture.
At the tomb.

Right before I found the door that led inside. This is the tower at the Cliffs of Moher. If you feel like paying, you can go all the way to the top and use it for photos. I think the guide said that it was originally built as a lookout for British troops who wanted to use Ireland as a staging point for some campaign. Something like that...
It's blurry, but there's graffiti on the rocks on the side of the road here: two little mounted horses!
Alice tries to woo a bird with her leftover cereal. Shortly after this picture, he takes off and eats the food that she threw at him. He's so cute and fat!
Random picture of Courtney in the tower.
Look at the Burren--it's so beautiful! And the ocean is amazing! And the beer is...everywhere.
The station where the bus picked us up.
Cliffs of Moher.


Exactly what the guide said NOT to do...a lot of people fall to their deaths doing this, I guess.



Pretty self-explanatory sign...except to those people from before.





Immediately after we got back onto the bus from looking at the cliffs, the rain started. Talk about good timing.
So cloudy.
A church ruin.
We went inside the Aillwee Caves, which were discovered in 1940 by a farmer whose dog got lost in them. The tunnels are at least 10,000 years old. This calcite formation is popular because the pieces at the top look like praying hands.
About 1,600 years ago, the European Brown Bear (which has been extinct in Ireland for 1,200 years) made hibernation nests in the caves. There were some bones too.
This bat and a buddy were still alive, but because of the cold lately, their feet are frozen to the ceiling. They can't move until they thaw out.
The service entrance to the cave. The main entrance was closed for renovations.
The way out was a man-made tunnel. It's certainly a bit more uniform than the natural one.
A waterfall inside the cave. It was so loud you couldn't hear each other talk. And this is only after a brief rainfall this morning!
Stalagmites.
"Straw stalagtites". They're not offically stalagtites because they mostly break off before they can before full-grown.

The "Frozen Waterfall," so called because of the calcite deposits. At the bottom are carved the initials of the man who originally stumbled into the cave, Jacko.
The cave guide.
Locals think this hotel is a joke, and rather than calling it a castle, they call it Lego Land.
These next few are all castles that we saw on the way. I don't remember any of the names, and we didn't actually get to go into any of them (darn).








The Burren, once again.
Weird candy. Don't ask.
Our bus driver/tour guide.
And our bus. It looks like a happy dinosaur.
The Burren.




And...more stone walls!



The bodhran I bought for Zach, one of the percussion majors at URI (he gave me money to, so I'd better send it out soon!). I found it at the cliff gift shop. It came with a case, the stick, and an instructive DVD.



A weird bench at the pub. That finicky bird liked it.
Views of the Aran Islands from the mainland.


And Alice.
Okay--so I was hoping that the videos would be all nice and labeled and separate, but in the spirit of keeping this entry a mess, here's some videos that I took. Like I said before, most of them are bumpy and there's noise from wind, but listen to the guide and you'll get some laughs. A couple are just me looking at the scenery--I thought it might be cool for everyone at home to get to see it too. Hopefully these all work, or these past two hours will have been in vain!














So that's the trip! Nothing else really happened today. The three of us got together to watch Hot Fuzz afterwards and I figured out how to hook up the DVD player to the TV (which won't read American DVDs anyway, so that was useless). Tomorrow is potluck dinner day, so I have to get up and go grocery shopping so I can make some good schtuff!

Good night!