Greetings From The Burren

This is a long post, but as its more interesting than my last three posts combined I’m sure you will forgive me. It picks up where I left off on Friday…

After spending most of the day in our apartment due to a temperamental dryer, Norah and I decided to pop over to the pub for a pint. We chose Monroe’s because it’s a few blocks from our house, is usually pretty casual and low-key and always has live music. We had planned on sipping on one pint and then heading home, but our plans quickly changed on arrival. Monroe’s was the busiest we had seen it and with good reason they were hosting a great band, Without Charge (incidentally I found out they drink for free at the bars, and they drink a lot). I know this will sound like a harsh criticism but I mean it as a compliment, they were what I can only describe as the ultimate wedding band, a band I would gladly have play at my reception. They had a few of their own songs but they mostly stuck to covers, everything from Bob Dylan to Stevie Wonder to Stevie Ray Vaughn (for my dad: they even threw in a shout out about Kinky Friedman). I mention the wedding band thing mostly because they played a great set of funk songs, the kind of thing that would have fit in great at any reception, you know right between the father-daughter slow song and the chicken dance. Needless to say I stayed for three pints and had a great time dancing with some lovely Germans.

The next morning (Saturday) I awoke early so we could head out for the tour company. After picking up our neighbors, Sammy, Steph and Brianna, we were running a bit late. I began to get nervous as it got to be 9:15 and we didn’t have our tickets for the bus that we believed to be leaving at 9:30. But all was fine as it turned out that it didn’t leave until 10. So at 10 we boarded the bus and headed out on our full day tour to the Cliffs of Moher. Our first “destination” was a castle, although it’s closed until spring. We were allowed fifteen minutes off the bus to take a few pictures in front of it. We then began the long ride to our next stop, Doolin, where we would have lunch. Of course once we arrived there we were strongly advised to only go to the pre-approved restaurant associated with the tour as we only had forty-five minutes. There we were only allowed to choose from the carvery menu and I took this opportunity to try salmon for the first time. I really liked it, I believed it to taste like chicken (and not in that mocking sarcastic sense) but I was informed that chicken tastes nothing like salmon. Which makes sense, I mean why would you pay 15.00 for a dinner that tastes exactly like the 11.50 one, but that tells you how long its been since I have had chicken. Sammy declared it the best salmon she had eaten and it seemed pretty good quality. I unfortunately wasn’t able to eat all of it, I have to admit I had to struggle a bit to eat it at first, and it became easier as long as I didn’t look too long at it before I took a bite, but soon I began to see remnants of its grey underbelly and I started to feel a bit queasy. I was surprised that I had such a strong reaction, I don’t know if it was because I have always been a bit put off by fish or if it actually was because it had once been a living thing, although I would and will eat salmon again.

We had a bit of time after our lunch, so I went to a local shop and bought my first souvenir, a lovely silver ring. From Doolin it was a fifteen-minute ride to the Cliffs of Moher, we really lucked out on the weather, after days of grey overcast dreariness we had blue clear skies. They have done a lot of work on the Cliffs since I had been there last and with some controversy. They have added railings, keeping people farther from the edge than had previously been allowed, but the controversy was about the visitor center installed. Our tour guide called it a Teletubby building because like the dwellings of the creatures on the children’s television show it is built into the hills. It ended up costing more than had been planned to build it and at first a high parking and admissions fee was going to be put in place until the difference was made up, but after much protesting they settled on a one euro facilities fee. I don’t know how I feel about the visitor’s center, but I did buy a candy bar from the gift shop.

The cliffs were beautiful, I still feel that I liked the ones on the Inis Mor more, maybe because it took so much work to get there biking and hiking to the top, instead of just being dropped off, or maybe it was the fact that one could go straight to the edge of the cliff and look over which allowed you to really feel the magnitude and height of the cliffs, or maybe it was how crowded it was on the Cliffs of Moher, probably all three. From the cliffs we headed to Poulnabrone Dolmen, a 5,000-year-old megalithic burial tomb, we were only allowed fifteen minutes there before we headed to the last stop. The area around the burial sight, the Burren, was beautiful, but I will talk about that later. Our last stop was the Aillwee Cave, and though we didn’t have to take the tour, we all decided to pay the eight-euro fee. Our tour guide had made it sound spectacular but it was just a few stalagmites and stalactites and the otherwise standard cave tour, although the underground waterfall was kind of neat. We then headed back to Galway.

I will be honest I wasn’t too pleased with the bus trip. It wasn’t the cost, but the feeling of being on a schedule and stuck with time limits. I would rather spend time at one or two sights than rush to fit in six. But the bus did allow me to see a lot of the Burren in a short amount of time, and its actually one of the only ways to see the Burren if you don’t have a car. The landscape was gorgeous, but again seeing it from the bus wasn’t ideal. As Norah put it, it was like being in a movie, I couldn’t feel the reality of my being there. I would love to bike through that area, although I’ll have to work on my uphill skills.

I never realized the subtle variance of the landscape in Ireland. The coastal areas are beautiful, somewhat hilly but open, so like an amphitheater there are always great views. But traveling today I saw some surprising landscape like forests of towering pines that made me feel like I was back in the north woods of Wisconsin, but the Burren was something else completely. Its beautiful in exactly the opposite way one thinks of picturesque Irish scenes. I’m sure many of you are picturing lush rolling green hills and sweet seaside hamlets and there is plenty of that here as my pictures will show but the Burren is much more-- barren. Its composed of large rocky hills, the grey stone broken only by patches of grass that come in varying shades of brown and deep green. I’m sorry we never stopped where I could get good pictures of the scenery and I stopped trying to take pictures on the bus when I realized how much I was missing outside of the frame of my viewfinder. The Burren has been the most striking landscape I have seen here and I will be going back to it soon. Again I’m exhausted so that’s all for now, wish you were here.

Cliffs of Moher photos