Chapter 4, In which we head towards the Cliffs of Moher, and discover a few more tips about driving.

After a good night's rest, followed by a winning battle against the hotel room shower, I was ready to go this Thursday morning. Nicole, on the other hand, wasn't, and I finally stifled my enthusiasm enough to see if she was feeling okay and, when I learned she wasn't, tried to determine what we could do to make her feel better. I suggested what I normally suggest: getting some coffee in her. It worked, and by mid morning we left the Limerick Inn and headed north towards the Cliffs of Moher.

The small yet decent size roads that surrounded the Shannon airport and Limerick began to narrow, and after about 45 minutes of driving we found ourselves on narrow slabs of pavement barely wide enough for two cars to pass. I say barely; despite the fact that i was still maintaining about 40mph on some of these roads, locals were speeding their cars past me the way I might maniacally do to someone on the DC beltway. Overall, this trip through some of the more barren lands of Ireland really built my confidence in driving and judging my position on the road from the unfamiliar situation I found myself in. And before long, my fears subsided and I was actually finding the scenery quite beautiful.

Tiny towns met along the way, however, were a bit more of a challenge from my new-driving standpoint. Streets widened but were barely big enough for two cars before people started parking on them. Again, cars would pull up on the sidewalks, but at best there was one clear lane to drive down. Of course, during the day there was a good chance there was going to be a large truck somewhere unloading something, or a line of cars coming from the opposite direction. Still, town to town I managed to squeak by without harming anything or anyone. At this point I was really relying on Nicole to tell me when I was getting too close to cars on my left, and we had a general understanding that when she shrieked, "you need to get over," that it was out of concern and I wouldn't take offense to it. Likewise, when I shrieked back, "there's nowhere TOO get over," she wouldn't take it personally either. In the end, we got through Ireland without any harm (and only a couple of scratches...I'll elaborate later), and this will be the first of many times where I'll say that I really, REALLY, relied on Nicole's navigational skills in the passenger seat to get us through not only the small towns, but the big cities as well. I honestly do not know how I, or anyone, could have done it alone.

All this said, nothing the entire trip compared to driving in the small town of Ennistymon. Nicole is convinced that the name "Ennistymon" is Irish for "total chaos" and I can't say I'd disagree. This was perhaps the most narrow of narrow streets, the road wound around tons of turns and tight corners, and was topped by residing on a giant hill. We crawled our way through, only to discover about five miles down the road that we missed the turnoff to the Cliffs of Moher and had to backtrack. That's right, go back through the town of Ennistymon. D'oh.

Stopping short of the Cliffs, we arrived in a small town called Lahinch. The town consisted of a small road with a number of businesses that sat one block off small cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The scene was absolutely beautiful, but the wind and rain at the moment we were there was so strong that we were having trouble walking through it. We made a few stops in some shops, mostly to unwind from the driving we had been doing, but then headed back on the road towards the Cliffs of Moher, which were now only about 10 miles away.

Chapter 5, In which we visit the Cliffs of Moher.

Wow. I must have said "wow" 100 times. Nothing could prepare me for just how amazing the Cliffs of Moher were. Standing hundreds of feet above the crashing waves of the Atlantic, we looked up and down the coast as the Cliffs seemed to go on forever. We headed up the designated path to a small castle that overlooked the entire scene. I wondered what the story was behind it all; the Cliffs an obvious impenetrable natural barrier to whoever considered the area their kingdom.

Then, ignoring all the signs that said "caution: do not cross the fence", I hopped over and began to scale one of the mountains. The ground, which had been sogged and muddied by rain for obviously some time, led me to within about 6 feet of the edge of a large cliff which I realized that there was too much honeymoon left for me to go hurling over the side of a mountain, so I headed back, but not before taking some pictures of the breathtaking scenes beneath my feet.

Nicole and I then walked to the edge of a large rock structure, with only air guarding between us and the ocean that housed our home thousands of miles away. It was just stunning; for the few "tourist" areas we went to in Ireland, I'm really glad we hit this one.

Chapter 6, In which we drive to Galway, and learn just how isolated one can become in the country of Ireland.

We had the better part of the afternoon to make it to our Bed and Breakfast at Galway we had secured earlier in the morning. We began driving through some of the most remote areas that I had ever scene. Here is where we would find amazing ruins of ancient castles and buildings standing in the middle of nothing at all, and mostly in the middle of cow fields. I'm still kicking myself for not stopping at one of these sights and taking a picture where, guarding a ruin, was a very large cow. Looking at our car menacingly, I'm sure the cow thought, "this is my ruin. You just keep driving, cause if you come up here, I'm going to have to hurt you." Come to think of it, maybe it was a good idea I didn't stop after all...

Following this were some incredible natural limestone structures. I, amongst numerous other obvious tourist, pulled off to the side of some of the roads (well, okay, the roads in Ireland don't have sides, we just stopped in the middle of the road) to take some of these pictures.

We stopped to have a late lunch in what might be the cutest small town we saw in Ireland, a tiny place called Kinvara. I had a wonderful cheese and salad plate at a restaurant called Rosaleen's. We sat in a window seat and just glared at the beautiful architecture of the small town. It was the type of place that gave the impression one could move there and just escape every aggravation the world could hurl at me. But, there wasn't a Starbuck's coffee shop to be found, so we gave up a life of tranquility to keep on towards Galway.

Click on the photo to see some pictures of our day.

Chapter 7, In which we arrive in Galway.

Once we reached the City Centre of Galway, we quickly became turned around and dreadfully confused as to where we were going. We had what appeared to be a decent map, but found that not many of the roads had any type of street signs, and the ones that did had a small marker smacked on the side of a building that was hardly obvious from the road. Fortunately, we found ourselves at a visitor center, where we were quickly directed to the location of our B&B. Still, this was only a tiny omen of what was to come later in the trip...

We walked into our first Bed and Breakfast experience with mud covered feet left over from the soggy Cliffs of Moher. Bernadette O'Donoghue, the proprietor of Kiltevna House, insisted we didn't take off our shoes and kindly showed us to our room in the smartly decorated house. The room was...snug, as Nicole has said. But, big enough to change out of our mud covered clothes and then take the ten minute walk to Galway city center.

Galway is a pretty big college town. College is one of those things that I don't really think about when I think of Ireland, but Galway has two of them which account for nearly 13,000 of the 55,000 person population there. We tried two pubs before dinner, the King's Head, which was unfortunately a very standard college bar, and then a place called Garavan's, a tiny place filled with a number of locals who were talking and arguing loudly, much to our enjoyment. Garavan's was much more in what we were expecting at Irish Pubs, friendly people in a friendly atmosphere.

Still stinging from the previous evening, our dinner was a thousand times better at a trendy little place called Spikes right in the middle of Galway. They had a nice vegetarian selection for us and the food was quite good.

By now we were pretty tired. We walked back to our B&B and dropped off to sleep pretty quickly, thus ending our first full day in Ireland.