The Cliffs of Moher

4^th of June

After a restless night, I rolled my weary body out of bed at 5:30am. We went into town at 6 am where the guys got some McDonald breakfasts. Broke (for the moment, need to change some more currency), I opted out of McDonalds, but I munched on my bag of apples and pretzels. Aboard the bus a 16 year old boy from Spain named, José, sat next to me. I started talking to him and next thing I know I spent the next hour and a half struggling to understand his broken English as he told me about some Spanish T.V. show. I figured with a couple hours bus ride I wanted to help him with his English. 

Then we finally made it to our first stop at a town called Galway. In Galway I learned about The King Head, where King Charles I was killed by two men from Galway. Also there was a family, the Lynch family, who kept order in the town and Mr. Lynch was the mayor. At one point the son of the mayor killed a Spanish boy who was staying with the family because both boys were in love with the same girl. The son was given the death penalty but he was very popular and well liked that there was a mob of townspeople present for his release. As mayor’s son he was allowed to stay his last night with his dad. The mayor knew that the mob would have his son free the next day, but to maintain order he called his son to a tall story of the house and hung him. That is where the term lynching came from, as well as the term lynch mob. After this tragic event the pope gave Mr. Lynch some prayer beads in thanks for maintaining order. 

Then we went to a church which only had three sides covered with clocks and windows, the plain fourth wall was faced to the common people where the saying, “they didn’t have the time” originated. From there we went to Jane Eyre square and headed off to our next destination. 

After a long bus ride we stopped at an interesting geological spot with rugged sedimentary rocks.

We then took a lunch break at a pub and off we went to the Cliffs of Moher. The Cliffs of Moher has been nominated as one of the natural wonders of the world and the cliffs span an impressive two kilometres long and 200 metres high. The Cliffs of Moher have also been featured in many films, most notably in ‘The Princess Bride’ as the Cliffs of Insanity. There we had an hour and a half to explore the Cliffs. We first followed the trails to the left which went a good distance with protective stone barriers. Then we reached a point where it said not to pass, but like a good many handful of tourists we ignored the sign and went on to the unprotected path. There if you went to the edge you could fall of the cliff that is over 200 metres high!!! I took over 200 pictures easily and Chris worried Sami and me by going right to the edge of the cliff. The cliffs were breathtakingly gorgeous. Then we went to the other side of the paths where there was O’Brian’s Tower. At the visitor’s center the building looked like it came from Teletubbies. 

Piled in the car again we went to a 5,800 year old Poulnabrone Dulmen, Ballyalban Fairy Fort which was a tomb in essence. After the ancient tomb we were once again on a three hour bus ride back to Dublin. 

On the walk back to the hostel I caught a man trying to pickpocket Sami but since I made eye contact and kind of stared him down (same with Chris) he gave up though he did try to take her purse!! 

(*If you are trying to picture what the cliffs look like, the background picture for my blog is of the Cliffs of Moher)