Escape to Eire - Thursday

Other parts of this series:
Escape to Eire - the beginning
Escape to Eire - Monday
Escape to Eire - Tuesday
Escape to Eire - Wednesday
Escape to Eire - Thursday (this post)
Escape to Eire - Friday
Escape to Eire - Saturday

Once again we woke to gentle rain but it was time to get on the road.  We left Tralee and drove north, following the GPS directions.  We were a bit surprised when it instructed us to get on the ferry, but after consulting the map we agreed it was not only the most direct route but would save us having to drive through Shannon.  It was quite cool on deck as the wind was blowing very steadily, so we mostly stayed in the car and read our books.  We'd been so tired each evening we'd barely opened them.

After exiting the ferry we passed a true links-style golf course, so different from most of the courses here in the US.  It was fascinating to see all the terrain features that almost made it seem like a giant mini-golf course.  While we would have liked photos, it was still raining a bit (not enough to keep the golfers away) and there was really nowhere to park roadside so we continued the drive to the Cliffs of Moher.

There was a bit of fog along the shore when we arrived, so we spent a bit of time in the visitor center first.  We liked the way it was embedded in the hill so that it didn't detract from the natural beauty of the area.  After a bit of time the wind died down and much of the fog cleared so we spent a good half hour walking back & forth along the paths, trying to find the best angles to photograph.  We'd love to go back some day and see the cliffs from the water.

Our final B&B was in a little town called Doolin.  It's so small the GPS didn't even recognize it!  We learned it was a seasonal town...and October is not the season. The good thing is that once we got to the main intersection there were signs pointing to all the B&Bs and ours was very close.  We were able to leave our car there and walk the two blocks to the main shopping/business district.  That's a bit of a glamorous title for a strip with a hotel, a gift shop, the tourist information center, a fancier (but closed) restaurant and a pub.  Of course there was a pub.  We'd heard there was another pub in town but it wasn't in walking distance and we never found it.  No matter, we had a pretty tasty lunch there.

We checked out the tourist info center and decided we'd go to a nearby national park for the afternoon.  The Burren is named after the rocky, grass-covered hills found in the area.  The main one here was basically a small mountain.  It had a couple of attractions, a Birds of Prey Center and a giant cave.

We'd missed the last show at the Bird center but were told to wait until the keeper got all those birds settled and he'd show us around.  It turned out to work in our favor as we got to stand in the small show arena while Jamie, the keeper, trained a small Harris Hawk named Juan to catch food from a slingshot.  Juan would still get lazy from time to time and not catch the food, so Jamie would grab it off the ground before Juan could get back to it and wouldn't be rewarded for his laziness.  The cool part was that after awhile both C and I got to slip on the leather gauntlet and let Juan perch on our arm!  Wouldn't have gotten to do that if we'd been in time for the show.

Then we drove further up the mountain to Ailwee Cave.  The cave is at least 1 km deep though only half of that is open to the public.  It continues to be explored but there are features like 6m drops that may prevent more from ever being opened.  But it was interesting to see the things that had been discovered in its depths.

We got a little lost going back to Doolin in the dark but eventually found our way.  We really like the rooms at our B&B but the wi-fi was terrible.  Doolin was so small that we really didn't have anything left to do there the next morning but after consulting and re-checking our maps, we realized that we had time to do something we'd talked about, but didn't think we'd have time to do.