Caves, Cliffs, and Ceide Fields

The west side of Ireland (Counties Clare, Galway, and Mayo) has so many things to see that we ended up spending a couple days there. We started out at Aillwee Cave (15 euros per person). I almost cut this out of the itinerary, but it was actually a lot of fun. We went on an hour-long tour through the cave, seeing mini-waterfalls, stalactites and stalagmites, and attempted excavation sites. There wasn't much else to do there (the visitor centre is a gift shop, and the tour of the cave starts and ends there), but there is a birds of prey show that we didn't go to see. Down the hill from the visitor centre are a couple of little shops as well. The shop we went in was selling their goat cheese (there were loads of different types, all of which I sampled without buying one) and different types of fudge (which I also sampled, and ended up buying some praline fudge. It was delicious!).

We backtracked half an hour to McGann's Pub in Doolin, where we hoped we would hear a spontaneous trad session, but were out of luck. We ate some clam chowder and were on our way to the Cliffs of Moher (6 euros per person, 6 euros parking). The Cliffs of Moher is a popular tourist destination, and it was a much larger site than the Kerry Cliffs. It was more rugged, however, and had a lot more foot traffic. We followed a path up to a fence and then crawled underneath the fence to get to the cliffs. We saw a marriage proposal at the edge of one cliff, and everyone clapped while Graham and I sat and rolled our eyes cynically.

We spent the night in a little cottage apartment in Clifden. The next morning we walked around Connemara National Park. I was hoping to spot some wild Connemara ponies there, and we did! Yay! It was beautiful and took us forever to do even the shortest, easiest trail, but we sure did get a workout in the intermittent rain. We highly recommend the hiking trails there, but make sure you're in good shape! You have to be in good shape for our next stop, too- Croagh Patrick. There were so many people there because they do pilgrimages in the summertime. I was interested in hiking up the mountain, but when I found out that the hikes lasted multiple days, I decided I wasn't so devoted. Instead, we explored the town, seeing a really interesting Famine Memorial in a park across the street. Right down the road from the park is an old abbey. I don't think this one was abandoned, but no one was there, so we did get to explore it. It had some beautiful views and a little creek with a bench, and we had the whole place to ourselves.

Our final stop was Ceide Fields (5 euros per person). This is a megalithic site dating back 5500 years. We were exhausted from all our walking, so we were glad that there was a little theater in there where we could just sit and watch a film for 20 minutes, relaxing before our tour. We got a snack from the store in the visitor centre, then went on the tour. The fields there are so interesting to walk through, and the tour pointed out where little houses or villages had been situated. The whole place was a bog, and it had been excavated to find these houses and tombs. To preserve the place, they explored the fields by sticking rods into the ground, then created a map out of their findings. It's not hard to walk through the bog because they've installed a walkway through it. There's also an observation deck at the top of the building (the interesting prism with a glass ceiling) where you can look out over the whole site.

That evening we stayed in Sligo. Sligo had a few highly recommended restaurants, but unfortunately, we ended up there on a Monday. For some reason, everything closes on Mondays. We ended up eating at Steak-and-Shake-like restaurant. I think Graham was glad for this; we'd been eating a lot of (sometimes bland) Irish food for a while, and now we got back to our roots with greasy American burgers, fried, and chocolate malts!

Total costs for Days 9-10: ~90 euros per person

Cost of airbnb: $76 in Clifden, $62 in Sligo