Western Ireland

Driving across the entire country only took four hours. We enjoyed seeing so many castle ruins along the roads. Ireland can be summed up saying there are lots of cows and sheep and stone walls dividing all of the land we could see.

Kristen practiced driving again and did a good job but felt more comfortable letting Matt drive. We arrived in Galway Bay and our Bed and Breakfast owner greeted us. We dropped our things in our cute little room and headed into the down town to see what it was like. The clouds were ominous but it was not raining so we took advantage of it! Quay Lane is full of shopping and quaint restaurants. We took a walk by the ocean and knew we were the closest to home than we would be for the rest of our trip.

The next day we explored all of the shops and found the original maker of the claddagh ring. For those of you who don’t know what a claddagh ring is: It is a ring that has a heart held by two hands with a crown on top. The heart stands for love, the hands are for friendship, and the crown is for loyalty. Girls and guys wear them on their right hand when they are single with the heart point facing out. When two people are dating they turn their rings in symbolizing that their hearts are taken. Then, when an Irish couple gets married they put their rings on their left hand, heart facing in I hope! Matt would have had some more mulah in his pocket had he just put Kristen’s claddagh on her other hand instead of the engagement ring! : ) (Matt sighs..)

We went to another neat pub called The Quays where a few guys were playing their guitars and accordion while we enjoyed Guinness. (Which is incapable of tasting the same in any other country - it doesn’t travel well.)

The next day we had the most amazing breakfast cooked by one little lady on the front porch of our bed and breakfast. The little chairs had pretty white covers and the decorations and wooden bowls reminded us of different generations ago. We hopped in our little Tiida and drove south along the beautiful coast to the Cliffs of Moher.

Trying to describe in words these cliffs is indescribable and hopefully the pictures do it some justice. We walked along the edge and even to some more dangerous parts to get the best pictures possible. The sun shone on this day which made it our best day in Ireland so far. The restaurant up there was built into the mountain itself and it was neat to eat there.

Continuing on our way we drove down to lower elevations and past more cow pastures and stone walls. We made a quick stop and a man told us about a famous portal tomb, Poulnabrone, just ten minutes down the road so we decided to make a detour. This detour took us up a mountain for a while and we got some great shots of the mountains meeting the sea and little Irish villages. Poulnabrone existed before Stonehenge and, when excavated, was found to have been a tomb for 33 people.

We finally made it to our next destination which was Bunratty Castle in a little village outside Limerick. We had fun walking around and staying in the gorgeous Castle Hotel and eating at a very popular place called Dirty Nelly’s. It was very clean. : )
The next morning we arose early for the drive cross country back to Dublin airport. Matt drove back until we got to the airport then Kristen pulled into Avis successfully! We got a short flight to Rome and, of course, we had complimentary crying baby directly behind us with big sis kicking our seats the whole three hours. it is almost funny now that every single flight we’ve had there has been crying... no... screaming babies right next to us.