Claire Blogs Day 8: "Listen, Kanye was out of line, but he kind of had a point, and GAGA WAS ROBBED."

I'm pretty zonked, so I will replace attempts at wittiness with Pretty Pictures.

Holy moly, we slept well last night! It broke my heart a little bit to leave the Ballinalacken Castle House, given the beautiful views, comfortable beds, delicious food, and fine treatment we received there, but so it goes. We had a delectable breakfast and went on our way. This is a picture of the Castle House, complete with Castle:

We spent a windy morning exploring more of the Burren, which includes a number of prehistoric sights of interest as well as several castles and churches. We did not come near to hitting them all, but we did put in a valiant effort.

We started with the Kilfenora high crosses:
We moved on to a stone fort, circa 1000 AD:
Astonishingly enough, there is no mortar involved in the construction of the walls, which are significantly higher than I am tall. The fort came complete with an audio-visual presentation with an animated component that looked straight out of the Sims, Medieval Edition.

Next stop was the Poulnabrone Dolmen, a sacred burial site from...the Bronze Age? Can't remember:
We continued North to the Newtown Castle, 15th century, recently restored, and notable for being round, yet with a square base:
Did you know that the King of England incentivized the construction of castles in that era by giving 10 pounds to anyone that built one? The program was so popular the amount eventually had to be halved. Clearly the man was planning for economic future of Ireland by getting the tourist sites built early. Obama should take note.

Our last non-lunch non-gas stop before driving in earnest was at the ruins of Corcomroe Abbey, which was perhaps my favorite:
Along the way, we were also afforded numerous spectacular views of the countryside itself:
(that's the reflection of the sky in that there pond.)
(that's a mountain made of limestone.)

And then we drove back. As Emily mentioned, the Irish treatment of the "motorway" is interesting. It is VERY CLEARLY MARKED, almost to the point that you wonder if the engineers are a little worried, like, maybe this motorway thing is too confusing for a country of people accustomed to driving on roads with sufficient lateral space to accommodate 1.5 cars, maximum. The signage is superlative, and warn super far in advance of all oncoming hazards, exits, junctions, tolls...the only problem is, they still don't mark the presence/locations of gas stations, so we spent some time driving aimlessly around small towns in the center of Ireland. Can't win 'em all.

I find the Irish speed limit thing pretty mysterious. It's usually 50-60 km/hr in towns and 100 everywhere else. Well, except for the motorway, where it's 120, but that's fine. 100 km/hr is 62 mph, and "everywhere else" usually refers to narrow narrow roads that are windy, to boot. On the bright side, people never speed, but I think that that's because most cars don't have the handling required. It's easy to solve a speeding problem if you make it necessary to violate the laws of physics in order to exceed the posted limit.

We spent much of the drive to Dublin listening to Em's iPod. Country music was quite appropriate, since the Irish seem to really like it. It also allowed us to argue about the merits of Taylor Swift. Navigating the city was much easier this time around. Something about a decent map, more left-side-of-the-road practice, and sleep.

And now, as promised, back to the hostel life. Tomorrow promises a few more Dublin sites of interest, and then, sadly, our adventure must come to an end, we must return to work, and our travel blog will have to wait until our next adventure commences...

Bonus Picture Blog Post: Pictures That Wouldn't Upload Yesterday Edition

I'll do a real post later, but for now, a couple of pictures to illustrate yesterday's posts:

Cliffs of Moher, View 1:

Cliffs of Moher, View 2:
The sign we and hundreds of middle-aged Germans ignored:
The limestone of the Burren:
Ballinalacken Castle:
Unrelated: blogger's timestamps make absolutely 100% NO SENSE AT ALL. They end up showing our posts as being posted like 7.5 hours before they are. I do not know why.

The Irish discover the "moterway", and we discover that we are driving on a road that doesn't exist

Driving to Dublin from the west is easy, but peculiar, because all the maps swear that you have to take the N6 for a certain amount of time before you can get on the M6 (M's are the only proper highways in Ireland, N's are like the street I live on at home in NY or smaller, and R's are all teeny-tiny backroads....there are also things called L's-we've managed to avoid those, which is probably for the better as they are even smaller!). The thing is, all of the maps have the M6 beginning at a different point in the journey! So, with two college degrees, we did the smartest thing we could think of- we followed the signs to Dublin! This works just fine, and it makes sense once you get going, because the M6 is brand new. They appear to have started building in Dublin and are moving towards Galway, but the N6 is slowly becoming the M6. Anyway, the drive to Dublin subsumed most of our afternoon, but getting to the hostel here was WAY better than last time (when we had just arrived). We barely got lost at all, and it was not stressful (which was nice). We only have one more driving adventure left in Ireland (to the airport very early on Sunday), which is sad, because Claire has gotten good at the left-side thing, and I rather enjoy both the countryside and the hysterical signs.

However, our day did not begin with driving. Our day began at the lovely Castle house (where we both slept like babies), with a delightful breakfast of eggs, fruit salad, scones, irish soda bread, butter, jam, tea, yogurt, etc., etc., etc. It was wonderful! I think the tea, fruit salad, and irish soda bread with butter were the best parts. We then packed up and (sadly) said goodbye to the castle. We made our way towards Dublin very slowly at first, and we stopped at many sights in the Burren (which I misspelled yesterday- no surprise there). We saw a stone fort, a castle, a burial stone structure thingy from like forever ago....it was all very cool, and the terrain of the Burren is very cool with all the limestone around and just tufts of grass coming up between them (the cows seem to like this method of eating condensed grass). Speaking of cows, they have cows here in colors and patterns I have never, ever seen! So many kinds of cows!

Anyway, now we're in Dublin. Sharing a dorm with others for the first time in our trip, but it's a lovely room, and the other girls seems great. I'm hungry, so I think we're going to go find dinner and a pub, and then more adventures in Dublin tomorrow!

Hugs,
Emily

PS- my throat does in fact still hurt, but not quite as badly ;-).
PPS- Claire says "it's funny that we've now stayed in 2 hostels with confessionals on the grounds." I needed to share that with you all!

Claire Blogs Day 8: Drive Carefully, Castle Ahead

Title taken from an actual sign that we passed while driving to Doolin. Alternative title: "Keep Clare Clean", referring to the County, in which we are currently residing. Emily's response: "I try, you know, but it's not my fault you refuse to shower."

We have arrived at the Ballinalacken Castle House hotel, near Doolin, on the coast, approximately 1.5 hours south of Galway. We had, as usual, glorious weather for the drive. The guys at the next table at lunch, Irish guys on vacation, told us that this is honestly the best weather they've had in three years. To illustrate, one of them pointed to his sunscreen and said "Honestly, I last used this bottle five years ago." I had mussels again, since I had such luck with them last time. These were actually wild, and it makes a real difference, and not just because some of them have barnacles on their shells.

The drive to the Castle House was really breathtaking. I find Ireland really interesting in how it has so many different micro-climates, really, because the Burren is spectacular in a way that is totally different from the way Connemara is spectacular, and they can't be more than 2 hours from one another. This has been true in general as we've crossed the country. I only wish we had more pictures, as the drive took us right along the water, and the ocean is a very striking shade of blue.

After lunch, as our room was not yet ready, we went to the Cliffs of Moher. I've been trying to upload pictures of the cliffs for several long minutes, and I think the wifi just can't handle it, which is Very Very Sad. Ask me later, or ask flickr, because it's stupid of me to try to describe them. They're not the number 1 tourist attraction in Ireland for nothing. The cliffs are adorned with a very shiny, newish Visitor's Center and a well-paved walkway, with walls. At the end of the Designated Walk Area, one finds a sign that says, more or less "DON'T GO ANY FURTHER". On the other side of the sign is a well-trodden pathway along the cliffs, but no more walls between the path and the void. And many, many German tourists. So we ignored the sign. Emily did not let me walk as far as I would have, which is probably all for the best.

We then checked in to the Ballinalacken Castle House, which is gorgeous. We can see the sea from our room! The hostels have been very nice, but honestly, a nice hotel has a number of advantages over a nice hostel, like soft fluffy towels that smell very nice and clean and a gorgeous hot shower in a bath that doesn't require flip flops or repeatedly pressing a button to make the water come out. It's decorated in a Georgian style, and it's just very...grand.

Before dinner, we followed the directions of the apparent owner of the house: "Take a right, all the way right, then go up a hill and down a hill and up a hill and down a hill and up a hill, and park, and then you can walk along the Burren Way [a hiking path] as long as you like. You can't miss it. Drive carefully, it's quite narrow." That's a direct quote.

(related: I think the roads south of Galway are noticeably narrower than the roads north of Galway. This is not a good thing.)

Those directions were 100% accurate, despite my new found aversion to any directions that include the phrase "You can't miss it." All directions given by Irish people include this phrase.

The Burren is very peculiar and also very hard to describe; perhaps wikipedia can be more accurate than I. There are rocks right in the ground, and it's almost like they're in water and you have to jump a bit from rock to rock to avoid getting wet, only between the rocks, instead of water, there are deep indentations where grass and flowers (more buttercups than I have ever seen in one place in my life) grow. We didn't spend too long, but we had some great views, and the countryside is certainly unique. You can see the Aran Islands from there!

And then, dinner. Oh, dinner! We had the best table in the house, with a view of the sea and the cliffs of Moher. Dinner is included in our stay (very reasonably priced, btw), so naturally, Em got the duck spring rolls and the beef (all the cows here seem so happy it's kind of a joy to eat them), and I got a baked goat cheese on salad and the lamb chops (the above also applies to the sheep), and then we split chocolate mouse and sticky toffee pudding for dessert, and some peppermint tea. Oh, and wine. We really need to get on the digesting, because we have a full breakfast to eat tomorrow, and I may never eat again, as of right now.

The best part of the hotel stay so far, however, was after dinner. The Ballinalacken Castle House is right next to, guess it...the Ballinalacken Castle! Said castle was built by the O'Brian clan (short people, by the height of their doorways) in the 14th century, and added to several times, and finally abandoned in the late 18th century. The hotel used to leave the ruins open to the public, but the public was slowly destroying them, and so they have gated the walls and locked the entrance.

This made us a little sad.

Fortunately, we're apparently pretty cute when we're sad, because the hotel manager very graciously took us on a personal tour after dinner. This was exceptionally cool of him, as the restaurant was still quite busy, and, by extension, so was he. As for the castle, the tour was quite comprehensive: we went in the main room, and then up the tower to the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors, and then the roof. Of course, the floors and roofs themselves are gone, but not entirely - the lower floors stone roofs, so we were able to walk around and admire the fireplaces from various eras. The manager knows enough about the architecture to fill in some interesting details. Yes, I got pictures, that I will post eventually when I'm on wifi that doesn't hate me.

Funnily enough, the manager went to Montauk on vacation several winters ago. Also funny: he asked how we had heard of the Ballinalacken Castle House. I told him that our mother had suggested it based on the March Bon Appetit review, and apparently the author of review is actually coming to stay here this weekend. I'm sad we're missing him!

Tomorrow: more Burren exploration, and a drive back to Dublin, and back to hostel life!

"So, are you like the keeper of the castle now?"

Well, Claire is working on a lengthy post for you all, but it's late, and I am excitedly awaiting falling into the nice soft bed waiting for me here at the one (very) nice hotel of our time in Ireland! We are staying tonight in a lovely hotel next to a castle dating back to the 1300's. The coolest part of today has definitely been that the manager of the hotel gave us a tour of the usually locked castle. He took us up into it (it has a tone of floors, and all of the stone is still standing). It was SOOOOO cool! Non of our castles thus far have been safe to climb up in, but this one was, and he told us all about it. This was made even better by the fact that the manager was wearing a suit and Claire and I were in sundresses climbing up a medieval castle! At this point, I asked what should have been the silliest question of our trip..."so, are you like the keeper of the castle now?". This would have been a silly question, except the manager just answered "yes", as if it was a normal question! The castles here are great. They're just like the ones in fairy-tales from when we were little.

We've had lots of other fun today! We drove to the Buren (pronounced Burn), which was a beautiful drive along the sea. After stopping by our hotel, we headed to the Cliffs of Moher, which are a breathtaking set of cliffs that drop right into the sea. We took like a million pictures, and we only ventured a little past the signs marking the end of the (very safe) tourist part (but don't worry, lots of other tourists did too!). We then went for a nice hike in the Buren, which has a very peculiar landscape, much like the Aran Islands. Almost everything is made of very porous rock. There were beautiful views of the sea and the cliffs, and lots of strangely colored cows.

We then headed back to the hotel, where we both took long, luxurious showers in the very nice bathroom here, and had a 2.5 hour AMAZING dinner at the restaurant here. I'm sure Claire will tell you all about it, and I'm really looking forward to my bed, so I'll spare you ;-).

Tomorrow we will have a leisurely breakfast here at the Castle house, check out a bit more of the Buren, and then head back to Dublin.

My sinuses are much better, but my throat is not happy! Oh well, I'm not letting it ruin my fun!

Hugs,
Emily