The day started off on an odd note. Our first rest break was at a place called the Obama centre. Originally both my friend and I assumed that it was an Irish town or thing that happened to have the same sounding name as the current US President. Turns out we were wrong. We were legitimately stopping at the Barack Obama centre in Monygall Ireland. When we entered the building there were pictures of his face all over the building. You could buy souvenir pencils with his name on them, souvenir key chains of his face. We found out the reason there was a Barack Obama centre, is because Obama has Irish heritage from that part of Ireland and in 2011 he came to visit. So naturally to honour him, they built him a truck stop.
But then in the Obama centre things got even weirder. We walked in and the first shop we saw was Tim Horton's! In my year and a half being in Scotland/Europe I have never seen a Tim Horton's. So being the two good Canadians that we are, it was pretty obvious we had to buy food from Tim's. Unfortunately Roll Up the Rim hasn't made it to Ireland yet.
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| Hot Chocolate and a Boston Cream |
After our adventure at the Obama centre, we continued our journey toward the Cliffs of Moher. The Cliffs are Moher are spectacular cliffs that stretch for 8km along the Atlantic Ocean and at their highest point are 702 feet. As we got closer and closer to the cliffs it started to get really foggy. Finally we stopped and it was so foggy we didn't even realize we were in the parking lot. The tour guide told us that we wouldn't be able to see the cliffs and gave us a ticket for the interactive cliffs experience in the visitor centre. But my friend and I decided to try our luck and see if we might be able to catch a glimpse of some of the cliffs. Well our tour guide was right. We saw essentially nothing.
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| You can almost see a cliff |
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| Apparently there are cliffs there |
Since we didn't get to see the cliffs, the tour took us to lower ground to try and see their bases. We could almost see them, but definitely not what we had hoped for. But realistically its Irish weather, could we really expect it to be nice and sunny? My friend and I now have a joke that we can say we have been to the Cliffs of Moher but we can't say we have seen the Cliffs of Moher.
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| The outline of the Cliffs in the distance |
After the cliffs our next stop was the Burren. The Burren is 250 square km of rolling limestone hills and flatlands. It was incredibly stark but also incredibly beautiful. Opposite the Burren we were also able to get a view of the Atlantic Ocean. The waves were huge, with nothing between Newfoundland and Ireland to stop them.
We continued on from the Burren toward Galway along a road called the Wild Atlantic Way. Our tour guide suggested not attempting to read while on this road because it is so twisty and hilly that people often get car sick. The road goes along the Atlantic coast resulting in some spectacular views. The road is also quite narrow, with a pretty impressive drop on the one side into the ocean. We were going along quite happily until we met another tour bus in a fairly narrow section. The two busses couldn't get passed each other. So our bus driver started backing up the Wild Atlantic Way. I would like to point out that at this point in the road, we were on the ocean side, with a road shoulder of maybe a foot and a half, followed by probably a 50 foot drop into the ocean. So it was quite tense on the bus. After backing up for 5-10 minutes they finally found a spot where the two buses could pass. Our bus driver deserved a ton of credit. I wouldn't have wanted to back up a car around the corners and hills that he had to, let alone a full sized bus.
We made it to Galway without any further adventures. Our tour guide gave us a walking tour of Galway and then we had a bit of time to ourselves to explore. We had dinner at a really cute little restaurant which had phenomenal fish and chips. After that, we headed back to Dublin.
We flew back to Edinbugh Monday morning at 6:30 so my friend could go to work and I could make it to my lectures. I will admit that wasn't the most alert I have ever been for lectures.
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| 4:30am Dublin |
Although the weather was definitely not in our favour we had a really fun time in Ireland.
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