April 14 - The Cliffs of Mow-er, Celtic Steve, and OMG Sticky Toffee Pudding!!!!

April 14 - The Cliffs of Mow-er, Celtic Steve, and OMG Sticky Toffee Pudding!!!!

This morning Brandon and I were super excited to be going to the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren. We knew that the Cliffs would be a pretty major tourist spot, and thought that we had prepared ourselves appropriately while en route. After winding our way up the beautiful coastal road, passing verdant green sheep dotted fields and pretty beaches, we were shocked by the sight of at least 15 coaches parked in front of the entrance. It was going to be crowded! We parked and grabbed our backpacks. The sight of the cliffs when you get to the top of the hill is so beautiful. It's amazing because you can easily see about two miles away where there is a beach that meets up almost with the road, so you think that cliffs that are hundreds of feet above the ocean couldn't possible be close. Wrong! You crest the hill and there they are - dropping away into the ocean with a staggeringly beautiful view.

There were a LOT of people around the visitors center and the tower right at the top of the hill, so we immediately headed out along one of the cliff walks. It is amazing how the edge just shears off! There were also lots of signs saying reassuring things like "unstable edge" and other safe sounding statements, which definitely helps you to feel safe. We started walking on the trial that edges along the cliffs, the Burren Way. This trail is actually a walking path that extends for approximately 30 miles through the Burren landscape. We would love to walk the whole trail someday! Once we got about a half mile away from the main entrance, we quickly became the only people. Oh my, was it beautiful! It was (I'm sure this sounds obvious) extremely windy! Brandon and I both had the feeling that standing near the edge immediately became much scarier because of the huge gusts of wind that kept coming up. Yikes! We walked about two miles down the cliffs, and then the weather really started to get bad. It had already been cloudy, but the clouds sank even lower and it started to rain quite heavily and get even windier. We decided to turn back, even though we had wanted to go to the tower on the southwest point of land, Hag's Head. Upon turning back, we had an amazing view of the line of the cliffs, stretching out seemingly into oblivion. We spent a long time wandering back, stopping to take lots of photos and watch the birds soaring on the wind. We had hoped to see some puffins, but we did not. After getting back to the main area, we decided to go up O'Brien's Tower. Turns out that it cost 2 euro each to do this - we went ahead and did it because we thought the views would be great, but it was a major rip off. The views were no better (potentially actually worse) than the ones that we had on the trail.

At this point we decided to walk north on the Burren Way for a little while, and went about a mile north on it. On this stretch we saw some seriously scary edges, with rocks protruding out over nothing, and some stupid tourists walking out on them. I'm telling you - one gust of wind!!! We saw so many people that obviously did not think at all about what they would be visiting. I.e., women trying to walk the path in high heels and men wearing t-shirts. We were walking on a rather slippery muddy path, and it was pretty cold! Silly people. We loved the walk, however. The views from the cliff tops are just amazing. We took so many photos, and now looking at them I'm thinking "why didn't we take more?!" Also, the cliffs are spelled Moher, and pronounced almost like mower, as in lawn mower. "Mo-wer..." So we started saying the cliffs of the lawn mower, and then things got even more ridiculous when we saw a gift shop titled "The Gifts of Moher." Enough said. :)

After this it was time to check out the Burren, which translates as "the stony place." The Burren is a massive, desolate plateau that extends for most of the northwest of the county. It stretches nearly to the sea in the northern part, and then slopes down to gentle rolling fields in the south eastern part. It seriously looked like the moon! Huge pieces of dimply grey rock just covering absolutely everything in sight. The draw to this barren (pun intended?) landscape is the huge amount of Stone and Iron Age monuments. The Stone Age remnants are mostly tombs, including a massive one called Poulnabrone Dolmen. This portal tomb is from 4500-2900 BC, and contains the remains of between 16 and 22 adults and 6 children. It was quite impressive, especially when viewed against the desolate back ground of the rocks dotting the landscape. The people who lived here certainly had quite a tough day to day existence. This was in the hunter/gatherer period, before farming was a part of the life style of the people. The Iron Age monuments were mostly stone ring forts, similar to the one we saw on our Ring of Kerry drive. Now, in typically Brandon and Lindsey irreverence, we had been having a conversation about what neolithic names would have been like. After I said that they were most likely unpronounceable to us, Brandon said "Nah, it was probably something like Steve." Thus, Celtic Steve and his friends Celtic Bob and Celtic Tim were born. We decided that the Poulnabrone Dolmen was probably the tomb of Celtic Steve. I'm sure that all of the rather serious archaeologists would have been horrified!

Next, we hiked up a stony lane to the top of a hill. I tried to pet a sheep - it ran away. Just another chapter in the Trying to Pet a Sheep section of our trip.  At this point, we were getting really hungry, so we stopped in the small town of Groth and got another yummy picnic from our new favorite grocery store, Super Valu. This was our third picnic from this great grocery, and every day has consisted of some delish demi baguettes, a local cheese, some of kind spread (tapenade, pesto, hummus), and fruit. Brandon did get some fried chicken the first day, which I thought was hilarious! It was actually pretty good....

Now we were on the road to Clifden, in Connemara county, where we would be spending the next two nights. We drove north through Galway, and then cut west towards the sea. As we neared Clifden, we started to see the huge peaks protruding up into the clouds. These are known as "the Bens," and they are the largest peaks in Ireland. Once we got to Clifden and found our hotel, it was about 6:00. We spent a while relaxing and then walked to the Main Street in search of a light dinner. We found a great pub and had some small bites. Brandon had a carrot and ginger soup and I had a fishcake with chili mango sauce and a small salad. We decided that we hadn't had dessert in a few days, and ordered some sticky toffee pudding. Neither one of us had any idea what to expect from this - after we devoured it, Brandon said that he expected pudding a la American pudding cups, and I expected something like bread pudding. WRONG, both of us! Now I shall devote a paragraph to how amazing it was.

Sticky toffee pudding is some kind of a small cake, heated and served with piping hot butterscotch toffee sauce on it. Accompanying this amazingness was a scoop of locally made vanilla ice cream. IT WAS INCREDIBLE!!!! The cake was really moist and hot, and the sauce was perfect. Rich, but not so much that it wasn't able to be eaten. Needless to say, it was gone almost immediately. OMG.... sticky toffee pudding!!!

When we settled up with the barman, Brandon asked him about the difficulty of some of the hikes we'd been discussing. The biggest of these being the Croagh (croak) Patrick, the hike to the top of the mountain where St. Patrick spent Lent in 441 and happened to throw all the snakes in Ireland off the top of the mountain. Snake free Ireland! We had initially read that it was a decently tough climb, but not too bad and only taking about 3 hours round trip. Then we saw another site where someone said that they had only gone halfway and it had taken them 5 hours. We figured that that had been an extreme situation, but thought it wise to ask a local.  The barman was hilarious - he said "well, the time I was sober it was amazing and took about 2 1/2 hours round trip, and the time I was drunk it was terrible and took a really long time." So funny!!! We laughed and then talked about it with him for a while longer. Our opinion after this enlightening conversation was that the hike wouldn't be bad and we would go ahead and do it on Tuesday, as we had planned. We then strolled back to our hotel and got tucked in for the evening. Somehow we ended up watching the end of the Masters - first time I've ever actually watched golf on tv!

Next on the agenda - Adventures in Connemara!