Enchanted by Ireland 2

A year ago, Katie and I had a magical trip to Ireland. I began blogging about it but never finished. At long last, here is more of the story!

After leaving Galway, we based the next segment of our trip in County Clare, renting a little cottage in Fanore. The cottage was really charming (using peat instead of logs for the fireplace!) and was situated just at the edge of The Burren, which featured very striking landscapes!

We had dinner the first night at a nearby pub, O'Donohue's, where we had more fish n' chips, more beef 'n Guinness stew, and more . . . Guinness! A lovely twilight stroll back to the cottage took us past many pastures full of cattle who were surprisingly scared of us.

The next day was certainly a highlight of the trip. We spent the first half of the day hiking 18.5 km along the Cliffs of Moher. The grass at the tops of the cliffs was so vibrantly green, it was easy to see why Ireland is called "the Emerald Isle." By contrast, the sides of the cliffs that fell so sharply down to the sea were stark gray rock but just as striking to see.

Some of the trails we hiked were quite precarious - very near the edge with a dropoff of hundreds of meters and/or requiring that we leap over open gaps in the path. This was made all the more difficult by very blustery winds that threatened to blow us off the trail. Still, the weather was generally pretty good and the entire hike was so beautiful that we found ourselves stopping every few steps to take pictures.

A neat feature of the Cliffs of Moher is the visitors center, which is essentially an eco-friendly hobbit hole built into the ground! It is accessible by car so, even if you aren't as into hiking as we are, it is well worth a visit.

That afternoon we took a boat along Ireland's west coast to see . . . the Cliffs of Moher! It was really cool to see from below what we had spent the day seeing from above. From this vantage it was easy to recognize them as the Cliffs of Insanity from The Princess Bride. The boat also brought us close to the Branaunmore sea stack that features prominently in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

That night we dined at Monk's in nearby Ballyvaughan (Excellent seafood!) and slept very, very soundly.