Saturday Bus Tour from Galway

I had read about a boat tour that left from Galway at 10am.  I had hurriedly made reservations the night before while we were waiting for a taxi and hoped I had scheduled the same one I had read about before.  Our plan was to leave early so that we could make it there in time to catch it.  We were running a little behind, but with had just enough time to get to the address we plugged into the GPS.  We parked where it led us, but couldn't find our boat.  I stopped into a hotel to ask about it and the called the number from out reservation.  It turned out I booked a bus tour and it turned out to be a blessing.  We had the best time on our full day bus tour.

This is us with our driver.  He was very entertaining and informative.  We were so glad that we didn't try to drive ourselves on the narrow winding roads.  We would never have seen or learned as much on our own.  He told us from the beginning that we had to keep to a tight schedule and if anyone took too long at a stop they would have to sing in front of everyone.

We stopped at several places and had time to walk around and explore.  The landscape in the area was fascinating.  It was almost entirely rock.  Most of the green is there because people brought dirt in so that they could grow things on the land.

This was an ancient tomb that was erected long before they had means to create such a structure with the 10 ton stone on the top.  Fascinating!

We learned a bit about thatched roofs and dry stacked walls.

A bit blurry, but I wanted to show how green the landscape was.

The highlight of the trip was visiting the Cliffs of Moher (aka the Cliffs of Insanity).

Friday in Dublin

Mom and I were so grateful that we had good connections and no trouble travelling to Dublin.  Jeff had a really rough time getting there a few days before.  We arrived at 6:30 in the morning and took a taxi to Jeff's hotel.  Our taxi driver was Irish and when we told him we were from Oklahoma he sang the song to us.  It was so funny.  He asked what two cowgirls were doing in Ireland and how much Guinness we would drink.  He said, "what kind of cowgirls don't drink Guiness?"  We told him we were Mormon cowgirls and would have other kinds of fun!


We took a nap for a few hours while Jeff finished up his conference and then spent the afternoon exploring Dublin.
The first thing I noticed about the town was the variety of front doors.  There were so many different styles and colors.  Even in houses that were all connected each place showed some personality with a door.  Our taxi driver said that it had been the theme of some of their advertising in past years.  "Come see the doors of Dublin"  or something like that.

The first place we went was the Kilmainham Gaol.  It was the one thing Jeff was interested in doing in Dublin and I wanted to make sure we had time for it.  We stopped for a delicious lunch at a pub nearby and then made our way to the old prison.  There was about an hour wait to get in, but there was a museum that took just about that amount of time to explore.  There was a lot of interesting information about this history of the area and the people that influenced the country there.  The prison was one of the first designed for each person to have a cell of his own and was designed so that any room could be seen by the guards at anytime.  They talked about a time when the population was all starving and people were actually wanting to get into jail where there was food every day.  Not good food, but at least something to eat.  The youngest prisoner was 5 years old and was held for 5 months for stealing a piece of chain.  There were also influential political prisoners held there who had good connections and were able to have furniture, and better food than everyone else.

We wandered around the touristy parts of town and headed toward Dublin Castle.  It was too late to go inside, but it wasn't much to see from the outside either. 

We decided to walk around and see the gardens in the back, hoping to see some beautiful flowers, but the gardens weren't much to look at.  We were surprised to see these multicolored walls as the back of the castle.  They seemed very out of place.  A happy surprise I guess!

I spotted a very bright rainbow in the taxi on the ride home.  I was amused because I had just taken a picture of a leprechaun in front of a pub.

We talked about the other sights to see in Dublin and decided we would rather seen the greens of the Irish countryside.  We opted to brave the left side driving and rented a car to head across the country to Galway the next day.

That night we had our first experience with Airbnb.  We stayed with an Irish woman named Pauline (and her dog, Buddy) in her beautiful home in Swords, near the airport.  She was so kind and welcoming.  She set out elaborate place settings and breakfast items.  She even gave us a book as a gift and set out magazines on our beds.