Ireland - Day 6

July 18, 2009 (click here for pictures) The hotel last night was a bit noisy, but we mangaged to sleep incredibly well. Our first stop this morning was right up the street and one of my favorite places to go in foreign countries: the grocery store. We have been hitting them quite frequently. If I had room in my luggage, I would bring back lots of food. I am intrigued by the things they have that we don't and the things we have that are packaged and named differently. Anyway, we needed to pick up some bread, cokes and cookies. We even bought sausage rolls-the sausage was a little different in them, maybe it was white sausage but we enjoyed them.

The drive to Cliffs of Moher was a rainy one. It has drizzled on us all day long. When we got there, we decided to take our new rainsuits out of the package and wear them. I didn’t really want to since I knew I would never get them back in the package (but I just finished squeezing them in there tonight). The Cliffs of Moher were beautiful. We could just imagine them on a sunny day. Robby said that we will have to come back. Even with the rain and wind we could see the cliffs next to the ocean which seemed to go on for miles. Inside I bought another Chirstmas ornament and had a cup of hot chocolate.

Next we drove up the coast to Lisdoonverna headed to the Burren. On the way there we stopped to take some pictures of cows grazing in front of an old castle, Leamaneh Castle. The Poulnabrone Dolmen was our only stop in the Burren. It was like a big stone table they used in rituals or for burials long ago. The landscape there was unique-broken limestone rocks with grass growing in the cracks. Would have been prettier on a nice day but pretty nonetheless. We decided to eat lunch in Galway and I put in "pizza" in the GPS. It took us to a Papa John's-Robby was thrilled because he loves pizza and I was thrilled because it was a sit down restaurant and I needed to go to the bathroom. The pizza took a little while to make and when Robby went to the counter to get ours-they didn't have it. They offered him a cheese one that was ready and said they would cook his quickly. He said we could just wait since we were in no hurry (and what were we going to do with 2 pizzas?) A few minutes later, the Papa John's girl came and brought another cheese one to us and insisted that we eat it while we waited. How could we say no? So we ate that pizza and were full when our sausage pizza arrived. We took it with us since we didn't want for it to go to waste.

It was starting to sprinkle again but we walked around the town of Galway with our pizza box in our hands. We stopped at the Browne Door (a remaining relic from the town years ago) to take a few photos and walked to the waterfront before hurring back to our car since we only had a few minutes left on our meter. It didn't take too long to drive to Cong where we are spending the night. We are staying in a hostel-lots of people here: rvs, tents, dormrooms, and hotel like rooms. We are staying in one of those hotel like rooms. We explored the hostel a little and then headed out to see Cong.

The 1951 Quiet Man movie with John Wayne was filmed here. So there were some sights from the movie that we saw. We haven't seen the movie but might watch it tonight in the hostel's movie room - they show it every night at 8:30. Next we walked around the remains of the Cong Abbey. Behind it, the monks had built a fishing hut out on the water. They would keep warm by the fireplace, drop their nets in the trap door in the floor and when a fish got in their net it would cause a bell to ring. The bell would tell them they had caught a fish and it would signal to the cook that their was fresh fish ready. We tried to walk to the Ashford Castle but weren't sure of the way to go so turned around and headed to the car. We did drive to the castle but weren't able to see it well since the grounds were about to close.

Our extra pizza came in handy since this town is so small. The place here has a microwave downstairs so we heated up our pizza and had it for dinner. It was still good and now we are full. The Quiet Man movie is going to be on in a little bit. Tomorrow is our last full day of sightseeing and then we fly back home. I have done all of my shopping except one more gift for Reagan-she needs one more thing. Everything you see in these shops are all the same as what you saw at the last shop. Hopefully, I can find the perfect thing and if not I will just get her some candy! She will love that!