We assumed since we had biked so much in the Killarney National Park that we would have an excellent night's sleep, only needing to be up for the 10:30 bus to the Cliffs of Moher. However, we still managed to wake up about an hour before our 8:30 alarm, though we both laid in our respective beds attempting to take advantage of the rest time.
After our futile attempts, we finally got up and prepared for the day, ending up going upstairs for the breakfast part of our B&B. After our amazing dinner the night before, neither of us were terribly hungry, and by that time it was 9:30 and our aim was to start walking to the bus station which was about a mile and a half away. But, apparently breakfast was a multiple course deal: we got apple/orange juice, tea, a bowl of museli, and then came out the plate of two very large strips of bacon, four mini sausages, 2 pieces of toast, an over easy egg, and half of a cooked tomato. I ate about half of it, and I believe Katie ate about half of hers too; both of us would've been fine with the museli only.
We eventually left our rooms and started our trip to the bus station...at 10:10. Halfway there we realised we would have to book it to the station to catch our bus. Suffice to say we made it, but there was two definite sprints involved, much more pleasant due to the fact that we weren't dragging our bags around. It made up for missing our planned early morning run.
Now we had about a two hour bus ride ahead of us, and thank God we enjoy seeing the countryside that way. This one was pretty spectacular with the ocean, little back bays, tons and tons of sheeps and cows, and strange rocks just randomly covering the hillsides. We unfortunately realised that once again we were with a group of Americans, but the ride there was pretty quiet overall.
We reached the cliffs around 12:30, knowing the last bus left in an hour (again, thankfully we kind of like the bus sightseeing). Katie knows my love for cliff beaches and coastlines, so this excursion was pretty much pandering to that. They were gorgeous (see the pictures), but we were annoyed to find that they wouldn't let us walk all the way along them, putting a fence up that clearly stated that no one shall pass this point. So, we walked to the other side of the allotted distance (5 minute walk) and ate lunch while looking over the sheer drops and the gulls flying hundreds of feet below us. (This was the first time we were correctly identified as Americans by a group of Italian tourist guys walking the other way, but we weren't speaking at all, so I maintain they just saw the very small AXiD symbols on Katie's bag. Which would say a lot about their knowledge of American university Greek systems, but who really knows.) We then realised (we're pretty sure, based on gift store paraphernalia) that the white dots all along a certain rock cliff below us were puffins, which we have no way of proving and is slightly odd, but still very cool. After wandering about a bit more, we returned to the bus for the trip back.
For this ride, we were surrounded by Texans, who decided it was their duty to talk about their lives very loudly. The conversations included such diverse topics as alcohol (“Guinness is going to be the best part of this trip”) and chocolate (“I just loove chocolate”) and the miracle of alcoholic chocolate drinks. Who could forget the following conversation about bacon flavoured vodka?
After getting back to Galway, we decided to walk back a more scenic route than the sketch one we had originally taken the day before. We found the main little street area, with tons of restaurants and tiny shops and loads of people/tourists. We had stopped to get groceries for dinner (no more eating out for us!) and made our way back to the B&B to pick up the food we had already gotten.
We prepped our picnic and made our way along the water to the curve in the road at the end of the buildings. There we sat on a mini pier/breakwater outcropping that jutted into the water, facing west and laying out our (delicious) mozzarella and salami sandwiches, bag of sliced carrots, oranges, and salad. And then the show started.
The glorious sunset lasted a little over half an hour, gorgeous both before and after the sun itself actually sunk below the horizon. The water turned a soft pink colour and the clouds picked up the golden rays, shifting slowly from gold to pink and finally orange. The entire bay seems to be lit up, though the buildings and distant hill cut off the final streaks of light toward the end.
That was when we decided that today had been a good day (even the sprinting through downtown Galway had worked out in the end).
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| Puffin Rock |
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