We only had one night of rest in Zurich after returning from Venice before we were off to Ireland for four nights. Ireland was not a completely random choice. Peggie, having some Irish heritage, has always wanted to see Ireland and Chizzy was happy to plan a trip there as part of the folk’s vacation here. At first, she started looking into hotels in Dublin but we figured that probably wasn’t going to be the kind of Irish vacation everybody wanted, so the hotel search quickly changed to a cottage search somewhere on the west coast of the country. She found a great one on Galway Bay in a little area called Bishops Quarter.
OK, fine, it’s a little house. Whatever. It was all ours for four days. Along with this rental car in the driveway.
I never did end up doing a post about the quick weekend trip to Dublin when I met up with Piro who was there on business. I did tell a few people about it, but the general gist was simply that I didn’t really care for the city very much. Or maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for it that weekend. Anyway, we think our instincts worked out for the best because we had a very relaxing time in the beautiful area of County Clare.
Finding reasonable airfare to the UK and Ireland has been tricky in the past and this time was no different. Ryanair is dirt cheap, but they don’t fly to Switzerland. The best choice is to take the train to Baden-Baden, Germany first and catch the plane from the tiny airport there. This works great because it ended up costing all four of us less than it would have cost a single person if we made travel arrangements out of Zurich. The trade-off though is that you have to blow an entire day traveling. This was compounded even more because in addition to the 4 hour train ride we had a 4 hour car ride to get across Ireland. The train ride was actually really nice because we had reservations and were able to occupy one of the nice four-seat areas and have our own secret little club. The car ride was pretty sweet too!
And, yes, it is a little trippy to drive on the left side of the road. I found it more difficult to adjust to driving on the right side of the car though. But this stuff sunk in pretty quickly and it was actually the roads themselves that will be the vivid memory of our driving through Ireland.
There were a TON of tour buses out and around. This, I think, makes my next point even more interesting. Do you notice anything odd in this next picture?
Yep. All of these roads were 100 kilometers per hour. That is over 60mph for those playing along at home. Even if you had the kind of sports car necessary to drive at this speed on these no-shoulder-curvy-hidden-dip roads you would be putting serious life at risk. These roads were full of pedestrians, cows, tractors, and huge tour buses. I found 60 kmph (less than 40 mph) was about the right speed for these roads. I have no idea what the Irish authorities are thinking when they put these signs up. Sure, a speed limit is the max speed but isn’t it also supposed to be a safe one? How old am I?
You may have noticed the rock walls in some of these pictures. THEY WERE EVERYWHERE! It was really cool. I don’t think Chizzy knew it, but the part of Ireland we were in happen to be part of an area called The Burren. The hills contain the largest collection of limestone in Europe and it really is something. This limestone is used everywhere to build property walls (and apparently to make the roads as dangerous as possible).
The Burren.
They even made restrooms out of the stuff.
So, what did we actually do? As far as actual touristy attractions went, we took one day to hit the famous Cliffs of Moher and make a great driving loop around The Burren. We took another day to head into the city of Galway. We took the last day to hang around the nearby town of Ballyvaughan and the Aillwee Cave.
Cliffs of Moher.
I crossed over the fence and put my life in danger to get this one. Seriously mom.
We thought Galway was going to be more of a quaint little bay city. It wasn’t that quaint. It was tricky getting into town through traffic and it was just a big busy city with very little charm. I have three pictures total from our visit. We weren’t there long.
The caves and Ballyvaughan were cool though.
Come on. It took 200,000 years for this to form. It was the least I could do.
This waterfall was several hundred feet underground.
The rest of the time, we relaxed.
Soduku was a popular pastime on this trip. George got into it too, but I think his proudest gaming moment was being crowned the Irish Skip-Bo Champion.
Not a good place to play in the water, but pretty good for rock and shell collecting. Peggie also got her own Blarney Stone from the caves.
Modeling her new sweater. Notice how she brings me a beer still even though I am just a haus frau.
Bar called Monks.
Some random shots that made the cut.
We ate at this pub in Doolin. A very cool little village town.
View from our cottage.
I think this is the only photo of the four of us from the entire two week vacation.
We had a great time. Thanks for coming to visit us, Peggie and George. We hope you had a great time too.
