August 22nd. Dingle

Today we did a round around Dingle peninsula. It was a very enjoyable ride. First we stopped at Inch beach and spent several hours walking around a wide strip of low tide sand. There were lots of long shells of the type "sea maiden's nails. We even saw a few live crabs.

Then we went to Dingle marveling the views - purple mountains with bright green fields separated by dark green bushes, unusually blue sky and dark blue lakes. This area of Ireland is very busy with tourists, there were multiple buses, cars, and too many cyclers sharing a new narrow road. However the road quality is almost universally really good.

We walked around Dingle and had some Murphys ice-cream - the same one we had in Dublin almost 2 weeks ago. Next we went around the tip of the peninsula enjoying more views. Here there are a few more prehistoric sites.

They are shamelessly being charged for at every turn. One can see that the people selling the tickets could not care more about these sites and I am not even sure they are all authorized to do it. But what can you do? Once you are inside the loop that's all you do.

Another highlight was Connor's pass - horrifying one lane drive on the road along the mountain ridge.     The views, again, were incredible. We stopped at another beach and Georgia tried ice-cold water. There were too many vacationers to find any shells or shipwrecked gold - our new beach spoils target.

Then we got to another place with a waterfall and did something we did not expect ourselves to do - dragged the kids halfway up the mountain. As it was we were pretty high up. But there were lots of others walking up and taking pictures so we thought why not. And they did not have the common sense to complain. The climb was not very difficult though - mostly rocks and some mushy soil. We would have kept going but wanted to get to other sites.

The next stop was Killarney. We wanted to make a semi-circle around the scenic ring of Kerry today and this would be the starting point but e got here too late. So we found a hotel for the night - Murphy's guest house and went Ross castle some 6 km away in the park. Kids really wanted a ride on a horse drawn carriage but there were none at horsepark when we were leaving. Fortunately Dan asked passengers at one of the passing carriages to give us a lift and they agreed. Kids loved it. We walked back. Kids were absolutely not complaining but I was ready for a break :) and some food.


We found the only Thai place in town - Genting. And were disappointed. They did not even try to make the food look good. And pricing and service was not up to par either. Not like we walked oit hungry :) but fortunately we got some ginger cookies and baranki and fresh duona from a Polish sclep across. I wrote about it before, you can find at least one Polish food store in every decently sized town. Yesterday in Tralee there was a major warehouse one that rivaled the size of Costco. Globalization rocks!!

But now we are back in our room struggling to stay awake. It was a good day :) hoping to complete the loop tomorrow and get to Cork in the evening.

Forgot to mention, yesterday's hotel Manor West Hotel tried to masquarade as 4 stars but we could see it through past the brand new decor. However it had one great thing - awesomely maintained pools - child and adult with laps, little lagoons even.

Isabella took over the children's one and even was able to swim with with a board. When we are back we will have to get the kids signed up for the pool. Though Irina heard from other moms at the playground there is a waiting list. The local custom requires all to wear a swimming hat. So now we have 3 of them.

August 21st. Cliffs of Moher

Today the day Dan R. had been patiently waiting for had come. We have seen the Cliffs of Moher. But I'll start from the beginning. It was raining in the morning so Dan moved all our stuff into the car, moved it closer to the city - it was parked next to Cathedral at the 4 euro per night parking only locals seem to know about. We went to get our last batch of waffles and coffee from Coffee Express. Generally great coffee is served just about everywhere including the gas stations. May explain why Starbucks and Costa did not get much further than Dublin.

A friendly keeper of the waffle place from Croatia shared that it was an usually warm summer. I am glad we did not get to find out what cold summer is like. As it is it rained every day but a day before yesterday and we generally wear sweaters every day. But it is all in the mindset. We are having a great time here.

W followed the route described in the flier of Galway Tour Company. Our trusty Ireland's Best Trips guide has slacked of a bit on the West side of Ireland and we wanted to make sure we are really seeing the sites of world significance.

You could tell that were on the right track by the number of tour buses on the way. It is intesting that the narrow road through Burren National Park has the speed limit of 100 km per hour. You have got to be insane to do this in the rain and while you have to pull over in the bushes to let those big buses and their long entourages through every couple of km. In constrast 2 lane highway from Limerick to Tralee is 80. I guess to let everyone who does not need to pull over anymore cherish the experience :)

The first stop was Dungiare castle, the next was Corcomroe Abbey. Quick overview of both: like most of them the former had the central cuboid tower where people used to live, and the latter ad less pronounced tower and triangular topped supporting walls and gravestones richly covering every available surface. We snapped a few pictures and ran back to the car to overtake two tourist buses that had slowly started to spill their contents on the road.

We took a direct road through the park and enjoyed the scenery that had again changed. Around Dublin mountains are covered in rich colorful bogs. North of that, bogs dry up, vegetation gets shorter. Yesterday's Connemara was covered in veritable green lush carpet of every variety. And now, the mountains were rocky with only some scant slivers of green towards the bottom. Would be good to check how far above the sea level Burren is.

At long last we arrived to the Cliffs of Moher. We saw that they are charging 6 euro per adult in the car and also something for children. Georgia and I had enough on this nickle and diming. We pulled a Russian and got out of the car before the check-in box and walked to parking lot to meet up with Dan and Isabella. It was raining again and thick fog has reduced the visibility to only a few meters ahead. Even more reason to exhibit the sudden burst of stinginess.

Eco-friendly visitor center is built into the mountain and pretty much is hardly visible from outside. But I've always questioned this form of eco-friendliness. It may not be disturbing the landscape but it seems like a pretty serious onslaught on the mountain itself. Its contents had to be removed to allow the center to be built.

That being said, it was an excellent center that covered the Cliffs from every angle possible including videos, photos, legends, geological, historical, rocks samples and all that for different-aged audiences. W ruefully thought that with the fog this thick that is as close as we will get to seeing the Cliffs of Moher.

Everyone buttoned up and we headed out to the walkway around the cliff. That too was done exceptionally well. There is a walkway a few meters from the edge. It is lined up with tall rock slates that Georgia could peek over on her toes. So no fear of falling over as opposed to the Aran Islands. Incidentally local slate rock used was beautiful - from millions of year old limestone with some wave patterns visible. Walkway was made from another kind of limestone - black with shells and corals still visible. That's pretty much all we could see. As we were getting ready to leave, I've asked Georgia if she could clear the fog. She said she'll try.

I am happy to say that her magic worked - remarkably the cliffs cleared for a few minutes and we could take in the incredible view (yet again) surpasses everything we've seen so far. We snapped few pictures and fog had returned. W continued walking waiting for another clearing and another view and rewarded again but for shorter periods of time. The walk continues in both directions but outside of the visitor center area the edge is not protected and travelers are presented with a suicide hotline on one end, and a memorial stone for those who did not call the number on the other side of the walk.

We were inspired and continued our travel
covering the Kilfenora Cathedral and the town of crosses, and Poulnambrone wedge tomb. Those were OK but in comparison to the Cliffs felt more like a candle factory and Delaware Water gap. It felt more alike an attempt to get tourists to do something else in the area. So we decided to get on our way for the evening destination and headed down to Limerick. The guide describes it like a lively city but when we got to decidedly provincial looking dusty modern center it not feel as poetic as it sounds. As we looked for the milk market and found instead an adult shop, we were glad that not everything is asleep here at 3:30 pm on a weekday.

There was a kebab place across the street and we stopped by for some pizza, donner kebab, and chicken nuggets, hummus and Ayran. Friendly chubby Turkish guy whooped up an amazing meal for us. From stratch. It is amazing how you can find those places.

While we were waiting, we caught the local wireless and booked hotel for tonight in Tralee and Saturday in Wexford. With our stomachs full and evening rest taken care off we walked to King's Island and that's where the city became charming. It is a really beautiful part of the city that is not properly highlighted and developed for tourists. For example castle is open until 5:30 but the last visitor can only be admitted at 4pm. Who would go to museum like this. The buildings are labeled with helpful descriptions and there is some amazing, if a bit disturbing, graffiti.

On the way to Tralee we passed Adare - this little town is doing everything possible to make it look good for the tourists. It seems picture perfect. We wanted to stop but it was pretty late already so continued our ride further South towards Kerry.

August 20th. Connemara and even more of Galway

This morning Dan drove out 20 miles to find the only place locally that stocked the tire brand we needed to replace. In the process he found out that someone else has already gone through a similar experience with another tire on our car and did not go through the bother of finding the exact match. At least I hope the gods of good karma were pleased with the effort.

Kids and I started out on a walk around town but very quickly ran into a shop that had "Catimini," "Desigual," and "Out of business, Everything must go" signs in the window. We experienced a few euphoric hours not too dissimilar to our time on the jasper beach until the store owner explained that it is a few remaining things in the corner that were out of business of being in season and so were on sale. Very disappointing! By then, Dan had returned and we hurried back to the hotel snapping a few pictures along the way.


Car restored to its former glory we drove off to see Connemara stopping on the way to see the beautiful ruins of Ross Errily friary. It is challenging to reach for large tourist buses because it is off the one lane overgrown road, so we only got to see a handful of other tourists at the ruins. And they too had left the place just for us soon.

It is a really interesting local custom to bury fresh dead at abandoned places of worship. Maybe it is comforting for the loved ones to know that their departed are in a place that used to be a place of worship. But how do you get permission to use the space? It is a bit disturbing to be in lost in a moment and imagining how the place used to be hundreds of years ago and then running into a grave stone barely 10 years old. That being said we saw a fresh looking femur sticking out from a hole at one of the ancient stone sarcophagi. A paradox? Georgia could swear she saw a ghost peeking from the tower window to wave goodbye.


The next stop was Ashford castle hotel. It is a truly giant non-defensive castle on the shore of a lovely lake with some mini islands. It is probably larger than Versailles. Plebs are charged 5€ a pop for a visit to un-maintained but equally extensive grounds. No map or bathroom is provided. It is 200-500€ to stay without a promo code. Truly a place one can feel like a royal. Somewhat disgusted we continued our journey stopping at the ruins of Cong Abbey. Those were more extensive and much better positioned for mass tourism so not as interesting and ghosts are all scared away.

Next we went towards Lough Nafooey covering the route suggested by this guide. In general there are so many ways to explore this truly magical region. This is where it looks like "real Ireland" in so many shades of green one would not think it is possible. It is very very pretty. Unfortunately it started to rain, and mists arose around the mountains. We were not able to capture any of the beauty with our camera.

Passed the beautiful fiord too but did not see any dolphins.

Kylemore Abbey was next. It was raining so hard by now that we barely could transfer ourselves to the cafeteria hoping to wait it out. A mediocre meal later the rain did not relent so we got back on our way. It was interesting to find out that Angelica Huston attended the International Boarding School while it was ran here at the Abbey. Living in a place like this must definitely have rubbed of and had influenced the richness of the character she played in the Mists of Avalon.

The rain had stopped 20 minutes from Galway. Next on our program was the walking tour performed by professional actors. Tribes Alive re-enacted stories in the lives of some of 14 merchant families living in town and revealed some of the secrets about the city. The actors created a magical performance seamlessly changing costumes, disappearing to show up in some second story house window or inside a pub. We were all blown away and it further added to the charm of this wonderful city. We will miss it when we will get back on the road tomorrow.

August 19th. Aran Island Inishmor

Today we were picked up by Michael Flaherty of the tour that goes by the same name. Half an hour ride down to the ferry and another 45 minute ferry ride later we were at Inishmor, the largest of the islands. There is plenty of information available online. The really cool and amazing thing about it is that a huge portion of the island is on a tilted raised plateau that used to be the bottom of the sea. There are horrific looking cliffs that clearly show the scale of an event that took place millions of years ago.

Very graphic window decor. Kids 

could not understand why. This
could be possibly a reaction to a 

very-sect like vegan mission 

operating here.

The rest of our time on the island was not that eventful. It has a very well developed infrastructure for tourism, extensive biking - though sharing the one lane road with traffic in two directions is akin to walking on the edge of that cliff, horse rides, and lots of overnight options. It was relaxing though to be driven around and Michael shared lots of interesting things about living on the islands. Today was also the day it did not rain at all. Almost forgot, at the restaurant on the island that is close to the visitor center they serve impressively original and interesting dishes.

Back in Galway we enjoyed the rest of the day. It is the nicest city in Ireland. So relaxed and beautiful. Gray stone buildings intermix with multi-colored ones. There are many musicians on the streets and in the bars - and some of those are first class like Daniel Vasiliev and Ivan Ivanchenko (Marimba and Vibrophone). Even in the restaurant of our hotel there were multiple acapella groups practicing for some event and we got to listen to some pretty cool Irish gospel.

Due to the wind it is safer 

to lay on the edge

Original cloth covered boats

Two Wildes

At night we walked around some of the numerous canals that seem to be converging from multiple directions - some even with the mini waterfalls.

Interesting local thing - we keep seeing the signs for hat rental both here and in the UK. I guess it is very important to the way of life here. 

August 18th. Midland Route To Galway

We have been on the road for a week already and have covered exactly half of the coastal Ireland. We really enjoyed the ride but some thing are starting to get repetitive in the Northwest and we were happy to head out to the capital of music, Galway.

In the morning we took a stroll down on the beach hoping to use the low tide to walk over to the neighboring island that has some interesting ruins. But the tide was not low enough yet so we headed back for our breakfast, just as good as at the Knock B&B's.

As we set out on our way we barely had made half the mile before Dan had to swerve to avoid the incoming car whose occupants did not have their coffee yet. Our car hit a stone and we got a flat tire. Kids were very uncomfortable when we asked them to get out of the car for Dan to change the tire. After we got back  on the road they both went to sleep at 10am for the next two hours as we drove to our next destination, Carweel, high in the mountains. The site there featured some more of those interesting passage tombs we saw in Knowth and Newgrange.

These ones were also 5000+ years old. They looked like huge piles of rocks on top of the turf hills. They did not overgrow with grass for some reason. We were able to crawl inside the two of them.

They were much smaller than those we saw earlier but featured the same architecture of the overlapping slabs that could support incredible weight for literally thousands of years. It was amazing site - to see all the beautiful scenery below and to be able to explore cairns at our own pace. There were not guides, displays or the ticket office. And there was just a handfull of tourists.

After that we decided to head straight to Galway to get oriented and find tire replacement places to reach out to tomorrow since everything was closed today. The navigator had picked the most unscenic of roads. We passed one dead town after another. Everything was closed. Galway was such a welcome change - everything is open. It is a lively city. Music is indeed playing everywhere. It is very beautiful. We got a room at Jury Inn for a few days. Found a few dry cleaning places and got the list of phone numbers of the local mechanics. And also reserved a tour to Aran islands tomorrow. This time we do not want to deal with booking ferries and worrying if they would return us back. So tomorrow morning we will drop off the laundry and hopefully the car and enjoy something different.

Forgot to mention that we drove past Donegal castle in the morning. While the kids were asleep I stopped in inside. The interesting features about this castle was the fascinating election process owners for the first 400 years had used: O'Donnels elected the most capable clan member to rule. That person had to stand in the footprints of the first clan member barefoot and listen to the rules being read. He has to leave his weapons behind and hold the white staff symbolizing his purity. And when the rite concluded he had to turn three times clockwise and counterclockwise to show themselves to their people and see their people and lands. The other cool thing was that the bathroom shaft was built above the river and it was angled to avoid being speared in the sensitive parts. There were also holes in the bathroom benches to allow in air with the "fumes of ammonia" said to have antibacterial properties.

Some other observations. Palm trees grow everywhere, even in the North. We saw some run over foxes on the roads but otherwise it does not seem likely that any other predators survive on this highly developed island. Even mini islands accessible only during low tides are sometimes developed. All the Russians only hang out in the cities. We saw noticeably many of them in Dublin, Belfast, and here but none during our other travels here. They are not like palms.