Kathleen
Cliffs of Moher and Bunratty – 6/22/2013
Leaving County Kerry, we headed North up the Western coast to the cliffs of Moher (pronounced More). These cliffs have noteriety of being the tallest sea-cliffs in Europe and they stretch for 5 miles. This attraction is so famous that people come to Ireland just to see them. The experience was extraordinary, but not necessarily because of the cliffs….we had noticed it was windy that day setting out, but my goodness, I don’t think we have ever experienced wind quite like what we encountered at Moher that day. We parked at the car park located maybe a 10th of a mile from the visitors center, and by the time we reached the visitor’s center, we were just happy that we were still on our feet. This was one time my Aunt Mo actually took my arm to let me help her and the two of us looked like some comedic pair from a movie being played in slow motion. The wind was blowing away from the cliffs, there was a slight rain, or mist from the water being blown in our direction, we had our rain jackets on and our hoods tightly bound. It was all we could do to put one foot in front of the other. My aunt said to me “I can’t see”, and I said, “I’ve got you, it’s ok” and we pushed through somehow to the (underground) visitors center. We all decided she would be better off in the visitor’s center than potentially being blown over the cliffs. She wasn’t all that disappointed due to the fact that the weather wasn’t very nice to begin with. Steve and I held each other up for the short walk back to the cliff walk and were feeling thoroughly “blown” by the time we made it. The cliffs are pretty to look at even in inclement weather, but not really enough to keep us out there more than about 15 minutes in that wind. LUCKILY, the wind was actually blowing against us, so it really didn’t seem likely that we would be blown to our deaths ( I think I would have stayed in the visitor center too if it were blowing in the other direction, however, I must say that it was a strange sensation being forced into a run on the way back in. I am totally serious, we were jogging at least all the way back because it was impossible to go any slower with the wind pushing you so hard….talk about bizarre experiences!
From the coast, we headed back in land a bit to Bunratty, home of the (famous?) Bunratty Castle and Folk Park. A folk park here is the same thing as an olde colonial village in the states, it is a place where they show you what life was like in a village from the past. Now, I must say that the reason we were at this particular castle and folk village is a bit of a mystery to me. Marie, an Irish friend with whom I worked with for about 8 years was kind enough to sit down with me during my last week in the office and give me a great overview of where to go and what to see in Ireland, which we definately heeded most always to our very great advantage, however, I still can’t figure out why exactly she told us that staying at the Bunratty Castle Hotel was an experience everyone should have at least once. I assumed this hotel was inside of a castle (it was not) or extremely nice (no again) or in some way historical or different (three strikes). After discovering this about the hotel, we decided to do the only other thing in town which was the folk park. Now, I like a nice olde village as well as the next person, but even Rick Steves agreed that this was one of the more pathetic of its genre. The castle would have actually been pretty enjoyable with its many staircases and different areas to explore if it hadn’t been jammed wall to wall with tourists (fresh off the busses). The rest of the park was a bit schitzo as nothing seemed to be from any particular place or time, but a splattering of simple buildings with furnishings that seemed to come from various times in the last 500 years. Oh well, not our favorite spot and not really recommended. I can’t seem to get in touch with Marie to ask her what we were missing (I am assuming I got the name of the town/castle wrong or something), maybe she will read this blog and let us all know. Anyway, our favorite parts of Bunratty were the pub (Durty Nelly’s) good beer, delightful young staff & the bar at the hotel (Kathleen’s 🙂 which definately served up the best pub meal we encountered in Ireland (this is saying alot given our eating habits) and I can highly HIGHLY recommend the lamb stew and the burgers!)