Day 5 - Ferry Ride

Breakfast at Daly's house was nice - Kristin had baked beans on bread and tomatoes, while I had eggs, sausage, and bacon.

The dog incident
I am driving us from Daly's bed and breakfast to the ferry. Through a 30kmph zone, a dog tries to throw itself in front of the car, and keeps hunting the front bumper even while I do my best to miss it. Had I not swerved radically, we surely would have hit it.

O confused garmin!
While following the directions of the GPS navigator, we are led three turns into a housing tract with no outlet. When I drive out of it, the navigator takes us in a triangle of streets and leads us back into the tract.
We must stop and enter a different destination (the city name that the ferry will eventually take us to). Interestingly, the directions indeed tell us to board the ferry and go across the water.

The Ferry (Ireland ferry photos)
The ferry is literally pulling away from the pier as we arrive - we dig in for an hour wait.
Incidentally, the gps shows the purple line (which designates our path) going across the water. The written and vocal directions state to board the ferry. It is only odd to see the purple line going across the water because it is normally going along a road.

We spent lunchtime driving and snacking on Pringles.

Killarney, County Kerry
We arrive in Killarney where we will stay for three days, and unpack into our hotel.
After a lot of wandering through the city, we ate dinner at a restaurant called Mac's (Mac's Ice Cream)
Kristin had the vegetable stir fry (€9.95).
I had panini of the evening (€8.95), and a strawberry frozen margarita, which was very strong. They played blues music off an iPod hooked up to their speaker system - it sounded nice.

Bar downstairs in our hotel
I very much enjoyed this bar. It never had more than 3 or 4 other people in it at once. I was able to get an ale and read for an hour before bed, every night we were at this hotel.
I tried a new beer - Smithwick's lager. It has a very slight bitter taste, but the entire flavor is so light it's almost tough to tell it is a lager.

[Pictures of Scenery] [Pictures of the Ferry Ride] [All Ireland photos]

Day 4 - Cliffs of Insanity (Moher), driving in Ireland

Today we drive to the west end of Ireland to visit the Cliffs of Moher (link), which are the cliffs shown in the movie Princess Bride (imdb) - the ones that Andre the Giant climbs (while carrying three people) which Wallace Shawn's character calls the Cliffs of Insanity.

We left the hotel, Ariel House, at 5:30 am (Ireland time) - nice place.

Next stop is the airport car hire (that's what they call a car rental agency) to hire the transport for the rest of our stay.

General thoughts on Dublin

• at night, while walking from bar to bar, people urinate anywhere as they walk along - I am assuming this is what they mean when they say pissing drunk. I frequently find myself stepping over fresh trail of urine, or walking past men (it always seems to be men for some reason) who are urinating on buildings or sidewalks
• beer cans and bottles are set down wherever people finish their drink as they walk (stagger) from place to place
• people run across the street wherever and whenever, even if cars are coming. I would not want to drive around downtown Dublin

Driving in Ireland
The bus gets us to the airport, we pick up our rental car around 7:00am.
Most people have warned me that driving on the other side of the road is very tough to get used to. One person even related an incident in 1987 where Matthew Broderick mistakenly drove on the wrong side of a road (with Jennifer Gray in his car) and had a head-on collision with another car, killing them both.
It was not difficult at all to get used to driving on the left side of the road, or even to remember to be on the left side. (Maybe hearing the Broderick story kept me alert to that, though...) The tough part was learning to drive on the right side of the car. It is difficult to judge how far the car is from pedestrians, other cars, and curbs on our left. I nicked two curbs during the first couple of hours driving.

Bed and Breakfast - Daly's House
Our first Bed and Breakfast of this trip is Daly's House, run by Susan Daly (link). She is a kind and generous host who makes us feel very welcome. She offers great advice on sites to see, places to eat, things to do, tells us about the people in Ireland, and asks a lot of questions about where we're from.

Cliffs of Insanity (Cliffs of Moher) (photos of the Cliffs of Moher)
After we unpacked at Daly's House, we drove on to the Cliffs of Moher. We ate lunch there, and then walked out to the cliffs. When I started taking pictures, it was pretty foggy. As we continued to walk around taking pictures, the fog rolled in faster and faster. Soon, the pictures were of white and grey fog.

There are areas that are dangerous to walk. Story has it that the wind (which can get very gusty there!) has blown off more than one tourist. Other tourists were walking with video cameras and fell because they did not watch where they were stepping. Other tourists apparently fell due to the eroding cliff edge. And yet others threw themselves off for suicidal purposes.

There are many, many signs (mostly pictures, some with words) expressing the danger of going over the protective railing wall, or too close to the edge. There are also areas where people ignore these and head right over.

There's a tower there built during the 19th century "to increase tourism." I feel kind of ripped off knowing that a medieval looking tower or castle might be built for no purpose other than to increase tourism.

Lunch
We ate lunch at the tourist center at the Cliffs of Moher.
I ate beef cannelloni with mixed salad (broccoli, radicchio).
Kristin ate Mediterranean vegetables on ciabatta bread with broccoli salad.
We shared a slice of caramel for dessert.

Dinner
We mistakenly walked to dinner from our B&B (Bed and Breakfast) after the local pubs and restaurants closed or stopped serving food. So instead of food, I had 2 pints of Guinness for dinner.

[Pictures of Cliffs of Moher] [Pictures of Scenery] [All Ireland photos]