The Burren & Cliffs of Moher

The Burren

(I pulled this off of google) The Burren is a region of County Clare in the southwest of Ireland. It’s a karst landscape that incorporates a vast cracked pavement of glacial-era limestone, cliffs and caves, fossils, rock formations and archaeological sites. On the Atlantic coast, the precipitous Cliffs of Moher are home to thousands of seabirds, including puffins.

This was suppose to be a quick stop on the way to the Cliffs of Moher, but Brian was in an adventerous mood and decided to walk through the Burren all of the way to the ocean....which took just a bit longer. I do love what an explorer he is! 

 The Cliffs of Moher

We finally had some nice weather!! We got to the cliffs and man that may be the coolest place I’ve ever been to! It is so hard to describe the beauty and scariness of it all at the same time. Brian and I hiked all the way to the end of the cliffs, which was around 5 miles. Around each turn we found a new place to take a picture and then the next turn would see an even better view. Thousands of seagulls have made their home on the cliffs, and we could see them flying and hovering in the wind and then go land on their nest below us. The cliffs are so stinkin steep and very intimidating which is hard to grasp from the pictures! We ate at the cafe and their seafood chowder wasn't nearly as good as the place in Kinvara. I'm afraid nothing will ever live up to that seafood chowder!

 

We always thought we were being so dangerous getting that close to the edge, so it felt better to sit than to stand since it was a complete drop off! We were watching youtube videos later and saw that sometimes the edge of the cliffs will just give away sooooo yeah. Not the best choice! We sort of forgot sometimes on our trip that we had four little girls that wanted us to come back home to them!

Galway & Kinvara

This was our first Irish breakfast. They had infused water which they called vitality water (I love infused water so I thought it was great)!  We both tried black pudding for our first time and poor Brian was burping it for the next two hours on our drive to Galway. We have found that the Irish speak realllly fast and we have to pay close attention to understand what they are saying. Also they don’t ever bring the bill when you are done eating. We always have to ask for it.

We decided to drive across the island to catch the sunshine while it lasted in Galway. We got there just a little too late to do any walking tours, so we found a bus tour that showed us the university and sites around Galway. The Spanish arches, architecture details, where the president of Ireland lives, the Galway lighthouse, Galway Bay. Then we ate at Kai. I got a fish salad and Brian got the fish fingers. We both thought it was just okay. There was a lot of fun musical groups playing around the city and it felt like a fun college town to me. We also saw quite a few young families which made me miss the girls!

We went to the Galway cathedral which happened to be where we parked for the day. We spent quite a bit of time in there taking in all of the pretty stained glass. Then we rushed to see the castle before it closed.

 
We made it to the castle ten minutes before the last group was let in. It was breathtaking! We could smell them cooking the dinner for the feast that night. Found the perfect bed and breakfast and ate seafood chowder at the The Pier Head. Called the girls and Bree told us she missed us a lot, Emmy didn’t want to talk to us and Sadie just wanted to make faces into the face time chat.  

The guy running the bed and breakfast recommended us driving to the Flaggy Shore so that is what we did to finish off the day.

DUBLIN

We haven't even been back for a week. More like a day and a half, and it already feels kind of surreal that we went on a two-week vacation with no kids! It felt like it was going by super fast until we called Bree on day 7 and she pulled some major waterworks. Then we felt bad and wished we hadn't booked such a long trip. (My Mom assured me that Bree was happier ten seconds after she got off of the videochat with us). It was definitely an adventure and I am glad that I have one adventurous husband to travel with!

I'll let the pictures do most of the story telling, but there were a few days I borrowed Brian's laptop to jot down some memories from the trip so all of the days wouldn't run together. Sorting through two weeks of pictures from two different people is kind of overwhelming, but fun to see Brian's perspective of things (a much taller perspective). 

Flight to Dublin from NY

Brian and I took our ambien about the same time. I felt all of my muscle relax and enjoyed watching Aloha since I had wanted to see it for a while. I got two different dinner options since Brian was asleep and I ordered both of our food.  Even though it wasn’t a great movie it passed the time nicely. Brian took an ambien and it threw him for a loop. He kept opening and closing his hands and he pointed at some passengers saying there were doubles everywhere. He said he was going to throw up, so I got a barf bag from the flight attendant. Luckily we didn’t have to use it.  Then he took a short nap. I put an eye mask on him to calm him down because he started having a panic attack! So strange because the last time he took it when we were going to Korea, it didn’t affect him at all. I got a nice four hour nap in, and Brian said he was giving me mean looks while I slept!

This was the game of the trip to kill time. Brian was really good and the game just gave me anxiety!

 ST PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL

St. Patrick’s Cathedral was breathtaking. We got a lot of great pictures. There were no tours going on when we went so we gave ourselves a nice guided tour. I told Brian everything I had learned about St Patrick from the Irish history podcasts I’d been listening to.

  I loved the stained glass baby butt! Totally made me miss Rosie! 

DINNER & DESSERT 

Leo Burdock had a smoked fish and chips that was to die for!! It has so much flavor to begin with and then they added salt and vinegar making it quite delightful! We were talking about how yummy it was all week and no other fish and chips came even close to being as good. 

We went to the Queen of Tarts and enjoyed a nice chocolate and pear tart and strawberry rhubarb crumble cake, only to come back to our car being booted! We didn't see the printing on the ground where it said COACH....I guess meaning only tour buses! After paying $80 euro the guy came to take the boot off and told us we would get a refund if we sent them a picture of our ticket and our rental agreement showing them that we were on "holiday"! Brian is still working on getting that cleared up.

Even when the Irish were ticketing us, they are so gosh darn nice!