A Race to the Finish

The next day was Travers' birthday!  We spent most of the day in the car, leaving Killarney and heading north to the Cliffs Of Moher. We had thought we'd seen some pretty amazing cliffs the day before, but nothing compared to the vastness of the Cliffs of Moher.  After a couple hours in the car, we parked across the street, got bundled up as it was SUPER windy outside (like can stand at a 45 degree angle kind of windy) and headed to the cliffs. It is probably impossible to describe these cliffs and how small you feel when you're standing on them looking down. And I doubt our photos will give as great of an idea either. But to give you a frame of reference, these cliffs are 214m high, which is over 2 times the length of a football field! And then take into account these cliffs run for about 8km (4mi) over the Atlantic Ocean. People are allowed to walk along the edge of the cliffs, mostly without any guardrail or anything, and some brave people would get very close to the edge and look down, but we stayed safely at least a few feet back.

After walking up and down the top of the cliffs (and no, we did not walk the entire 8km), we hopped back in the car and headed to Galway, our final destination in our week-long trip in Ireland.

One thing to note about our drive from the cliffs to Galway, is we passed through The Burren, which is an area in Ireland where the landscape is so unique. It is made from limestone pavements with cracks throughout, leaving these rocks that seem to have been intentionally placed there by someone. Plus the area is filled with these low rock walls that we never figured out how they got there or why as they don't seem to have any logic or surround anything in particular.








We arrived in Galway by late afternoon. We had read that the Galway horse races were going on, so instead of checking into our hotel, we drove straight to the racetrack to check out the horses. It was a HUGE racetrack, large than I've ever seen, but unfortunately, not very crowded with people. But we made it fun anyway. Before the races, the horses are paraded around a small circle so everyone can look at them and choose which one they want to bet on. Then, you can walk over to this other large circle made by tons of betting tables. Each table had a screen listing all the odds that company or person assigned to each horse.








We watched one race first to see how it went, and then finally Travers took on a bet. He figured it was his birthday, he had to see if he could win some money!  Unfortunately, the horses did not agree, and he didn't win. But we still had fun shouting for our horse and watching them go round the track!













After the races, we drove back to our hotel, checked in, and headed right back out to explore the town and find a place for dinner. We walked down the main pedestrian street, past tons of pubs and shops. Stopped in one to have a beer and cider, then continued our walk to where several restaurants were located. We amazingly were able to decide on a nice restaurant. where we were seated right at the window so we could watch the people walking by. We topped the night off by finding a pub that had a band playing fun lively Irish music!

The next day, our final day in Galway, was spent walking through town, along the river's edge, then along the ocean's edge and all the way to Salthill, a neighboring town. The river in town was beautiful, and once at the Ocean, the clouds in the blue sky seemed to go on forever, and the ocean sparkled from the sun. We had some rain on the walk, and it took about twice as long as we had anticipated, but the views made up for it. And we were able to find a delicious restaurant for lunch as soon as we arrived in Salthill.

Luckily, we found a bus back to Galway, and with a few hours left before we needed to head back to Dublin, we did some souvenir shopping, then sat outside in the sun at a pub to enjoy our last Guinness and Bulmers Cider.  And in the street, these two guys were standing on metal posts, playing their banjos, dueling it out. A perfect way to enjoy our beers and our last day in Ireland.