Taste the Potato: Connemara, Galway, the Burren & Cliffs of Moher

So the first hostel experience of the trip was a success! We stayed at the Four Courts in Dublin city for a night since our connecting tour bus to the west was at 7am. Unfortunately we had to leave before the free breakfast…bummer. We got to Dublin around 9pm Wednesday night and after checking into the hostel, we went to walk around the area for a bit. We ended up going to a pub in an area called ‘the temple bar’ – it’s basically a tourist street of pubs and a couple shops. There was really awesome live music and I had my first ‘real’ Guinness…it really does taste different here. Yum. The music and atmosphere was great, everyone was singing along – it was funnn.


River Liffey in Dublin


Christ Church Cathedral


The Temple Bar District

The ride out to Galway from Dublin (clear across the country) took about 3 hours – imagine being able to drive across the US in 3 hours, I think it’d be pretty sweet. Our tour got switched around so we did Connemara on Thursday instead of Friday which ended up working out better. Connemara is northwest of Galway and the whole tour lasted 7ish hours and we stopped a bunch of places, including: the Quiet Man Bridge, Inagh Valley, Kylemore Abbey, Killary Harbour, Lough Nafooey, Cong village and obviously through Connemara. It was so beautiful - Connemara is a fjord (formed from glaciers) and is known for marble mining (different colors too!). We went to Kylemore Abbey which used to be a boarding school (or something like that) and looked like a castle in the middle of mountains, so cool. I don’t think I would have minded going to boarding school there, for the most part at least. There was also a walled garden and a cool gothic church where a group was singing.


Connemara




Kylemore Abbey


Lough Nafooey

Galway is a really cute city, but it has more of a town feel. We went ‘downtown’ for dinner to a fish and chips type place – among the interesting dinners were Kelly, who had haggis, and Holly, who had an 11 inch sausage…it extend out on either side by like 3 inches. We walked around to different shops for a bit after in the rain and bought some things. The hostel we stayed at (called Snoozles) did a pub crawl that night so we decided to join in! The hostel was also really awesome too; we had our own room and bathroom, win. We are trying not to get our hopes and expectations up for hostels in Italy…because at least a couple of them are definitely not going to be as nice. Owell.

We got to sleep in a little bit Friday (at least relative to our 5:30 alarms on Thursday) before the bus for the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren. This tour was also 7ish hours (a little more by the time we got back) and was absolutely fantastic…although still not long enough. Everywhere on this tour was southwest of Galway. The Burren is an area of huge limestone rock deposits (hills) so it looks barren and is very rockey. We went to Poulnabrone Dolmen which was apparently constructed by Neolithic farmers almost 6,000 years ago. Like Stonehenge, no one knows how the rocks weighing tons were moved and assembled. Pretty insane. On the way to the cliffs we passed a couple castles – always cool. However, I can’t even begin to compare anything to the Cliffs of Moher. Holy crap. SO AMAZING!! I am still in shock, especially due to some of the pictures we took. All parents reading this will probably not appreciate some of the following photos. BUT the important thing is that we are fine. :) And we have awesome pictures to show for it. We had an hour and a half there, but you clearly need an entire day…if not a lifetime…to spend there. I won’t ramble about them for too long, I think the pictures will say everything.


Us in the Burren


Poulnabrone Dolmen


The Cliffs of Moher!!


I took over 150 photos of this place alone...


Adrenaline rushhh - forget the roller coasters


More variations of these will be on Facebook at some point!

Fun Fact: On top of the jet lag, there is bizarre sunlight throughout the day to get used to. It stays light until 11pm and gets light around 4 am. I’m kind of a fan.