Ireland Day 12

Ginger Count: 525,600 gingers. If any of you get that reference you get bonus points.

The day’s agenda: The Cliffs of Moher!

A note from yesterday: I said I would report back on Buried at Sea once I tried it. Part of me wants to go into a long and drawn out discussion regarding the subtleties of the beer and how delicious it was, but I would be talking out my ass if I did that as I know next to nothing about beer. That said, my entire experience can be summed up in this screenshot of a SnapChat I took last night:

Dani and I also hit the nightlife of Galway and had some fun. Dani had a bit too much fun…so Miranda was on babysitting duty. We both made it back safely to the room, none the worse for wear!

The next morning, after breakfast and such, we left for the Cliffs of Moher, located in the Burren National Park, which is pretty much the ecological hotspot of Ireland, home to over 700 different species of flora. The Cliffs were just as breathtaking as the pictures on the Internet make them out to be.

Gah, so pretty! The first drawback was that there were so many people. And some of those people had dogs. And some of those people with dogs failed to clean up after said dogs. Those kinds of people make Miranda angry. The farther we walked along, however, the fewer people around. Yay! The other drawback was that there were these stupid black fly things that swarmed anything and everything. I didn’t get bitten by any of them as far as I could tell, but the pesky things flew up my nose, in my ears, and perched on any part of my body, exposed or otherwise, and clung like their little lives depended on it.

A note to my mother: if it looks like your child was dangling off the side of a cliff to take any of those photos I cannot assure you that wasn’t the case. Not like your child has been known to do such things at cliff-type places with long drops underneath them *cough* Grand Canyon *cough cough*

Ahem, anywho…Dani and I walked along the cliffs until we pretty much came to the farthest tip of the Cliffs. Along the way, we passed a section where people seem to stop and make cairns.

Not exactly sure of their purpose other than to look cool. Trail markers? Nope. Were they offerings to the gods of the Cliffs? I think that’s more a Southwestern Native American thing…oh well it was cool. I was too afraid to leave a stone atop a cairn lest I knock the entire thing down and then curse myself with terrible luck for as long as I live. Okay, maybe that was a little melodramatic but still.

There was a cool old tower-looking thing at the end of the Cliffs that I was looking forward to exploring. However, when we got down there, it was fenced off with what looked like electric fencing and was marked as private property. What kind of wingnut owns the tip of a cliff? Anyways, I digress, it’s not worth getting all riled up.

At this point, I feel that I should say that Dani and I had been hiking along for about two and a half hours. There was a way down from the cliffs that led to a car park where there was supposed to be a bus pickup to take us the five-ish kilometers back to the visitor center where good ol’ Seamus was parked. We decide to go that route instead of turn around and retrace our path along the Cliffs. When we got down to the car park, we realized that the next bus wasn’t scheduled to come along for an hour and a half or so.

So we decided to walk. And both of us were so hungry that the idea of eating grass was becoming pleasant. Dani wouldn’t let me eat the wild raspberries and blackberries growing along the side of the road, and I was sad. After about thirty minutes of that Dani stuck her thumb out at some passing cars and a nice gentleman with his son from Limerick and their Australian foreign exchange student gave us a lift the rest of the way to the visitor center. Yay for officially hitchhiking for the first time!

Once we got back to the visitor center, we stuffed food in our faces and hopped in the car for the return journey to Galway and the hotel. I decided not to bring sunscreen was a great idea since Ireland is rainy and gross eighty percent of the year, so naturally, it was super sunny today, and I now resemble an overcooked turkey. At least the radiation is less at this altitude so, in theory, I have a lower risk of getting skin cancer due to this sunburn! At least that’s what I’m telling myself…

I can’t believe this is our second-to-last night in Ireland, and then it’s back to school for Dani and the entrance into Adulting 101 for me. What an adventure!