A wee bit of sunshine in the sky this morning. We packed our bags and headed down to our second breakfast at Sharamore House. Another great full Irish breakfast, fresh fruit bowl, pancakes, coffee, tea, and orange juice. These huge breakfast feasts are going to be the death of us, particularly when we have a lot of car time and very little exercise.
We said our goodbyes to our landlady/hostess and drove off through Clifden and towards Galway, the first destination of the day. We fought our way through the city traffic to a multi-storey car park in the City Centre, left the car, hoping we could find it again, looking for a restroom and to stretch our legs. We first found the necessities and then found the pedestrian walks through out the City Centre. As it was the noon hour, and also the first week of summer holiday for school children, the walks were packed. People “enslaved by desire of merchandise and manufactured articles” shopping, eating in the myriad of patio restaurants, and buskers everywhere, serenading all with their music. A magical scene. (And the quote courtesy of Willa Cather in her novel Youth and the Bright Medusa.)
We found our way back to the car park and paid to release the vehicle. We spent the next nearly one hour trying to find our way out of Galway. We circled the block of our car park three times just trying to find a highway out of town. the traffic was heavy and the route poorly marked, at least for us foreigners. After the third swing around the area, we finally took a left turn with no parking and found the highway we were looking for. Today was the start of the horse racing meet at Galway and we were lucky to find our way out before the first of the crowd for the afternoon opening race started.
We were trying for a southwesterly direction, looking to get to the UNESCO Heritage site of the Cliffs of Moher.
Two interesting facts about the Cliffs of Moher: at their highest, the elevation, or sheer drop, above the Atlantic Ocean is 702 feet. Second, it is one of the most popular tourist sites in Ireland, attracting over 1.6 million visitors per year. Most of those visitors joined us this day! When we were last here (2002!), we shared the cliffs with maybe 50 people. There is no doubt that more than 1500 fellow travelers trod the paths and in and out of 6 (count ‘em) shops and the restaurant.
We walked along the designated and now very safe walk along the cliffs, viewing the scene and looking out across the Atlantic, only 3,000 miles away from Newfoundland. After a stop in the gift shops, coming away with only an ice cream cone and a new coffee cup, we trooped back to the car, loaded up and, as we pulled out, Deb received a note that Zoe and the three little Highlands arrived safely on the Emerald Isle for their version of a truly Great Adventure of a Lifetime.
We then viewed the lovely scenery as we headed through Limerick and towards our final destination of Adare and our lodging for the night - The Dunraven Hotel. this upscale property provided lovely accommodations, with only a few downsides. Firstly, our assigned suites were down through a maze of hallways and up steps to the second level; this necessitated utilizing a bellhop and a luggage cart to get our belongings to the correct location, sprinkling breadcrumbs along the way so we could find our way back to reception. Secondly was a problem that wasn’t discovered until the next morning: no coffee pot or hot water pot in the room!
As we had not arrived into our rooms until 6:30 PM, we made a reservation at the restaurant for 7:45 and then enjoyed a glass of wine in the Covert suite. Dinner consisted of three plates of barley - mushroom risotto and one of roasted chicken breast. An Irish version of a Dirty Martini (one little olive) was consumed, along with some wine. The meal was good, the service mediocre for such an upscale establishment. We took a short walk to offset the lateness of the meal. Adare looks much the same as it did 20 years ago with the charming thatched cottages and cascading flowers but the traffic and the noise of it were new and take a lot away from this lovely little village. We have decided that the only times to visit Ireland are April/May and late September and October. Summer tourism has skyrocketed and turned this beautiful island into a wet and very green Disney World. We were back in our rooms by 9:30 and ready for bed.
