Doolin to Killearney back to Dublin, Cliffs of Moher, Sleeping Giant, Blarney Castle
The next morning, this’d be on Saturday the 24th, we got up early, much to my misfortune to head out to the cliffs of Moher.
Despite my late night, I was up eating breakfast with my tent struck before go time. It had rained that night and while sleeping with the pattering of rain is good, the striking of a wet tent is not.
The cliffs of Moher are supposed to be beautiful, cause they have a slight red tint to them. I saw them in a post card and they really don’t seem like much, but then I’ve driven along the Pacific Coast Highway, and I’ve been to the ocean cliffs of New Zealand so I may be slightly jaded. We got the pleasure of partially seeing them, the rest clouded in mist. It was kind of mysterious and cool, but then there wasn’t good visibility either. Plus, they’re commercializing the whole thing, putting in barriers and a visitor’s center so there was construction going on everywhere. They’ll most likely charge once they have it all finished.
We took a ferry over to Tarbert and James had said there was a glass bottom on this ferry. A group of us went to go find it and without luck, asking someone. The man smiled and said, “Is someone puttin you on?” I smiled in realization and cursed James, to later scold him for his lies. All lies!
Next, we came to Slea Head which in the ancient world was the edge of the earth, cause as far as Europeans knew, there was nothing else after that, only water. James had been telling us many Celtic tales along the way which I found very interesting. Such as the tales of Fun McCool (pronounced: Fiune MicKool), yes that’s a real name, who was a giant back in the day and was the greatest of the Fiene warriors. Well, Fun McCool never died. Instead he went to sleep to awaken when Ireland needed him, much like King Arthur. And here at the edge of the world, you could see McCool’s sleeping self. Looking off into the distance, an island looked pretty much like a sleeping giant and he was huge. It was said that when Fun McCool would stand erect, you could see all of Ireland between his legs. Now besides the sexual implications, that’s still a pretty big guy.
Next we went to Coumeenole beach, which was beautiful. And this is one of those reasons why I don’t like to do tours, cause we only had about 30 minutes there, which was enough time to dip our feet in the water and take some pics, that’s it. But it’s a beautiful secluded beach you have to walk down a cliff side to get too. All throughout this country, the basalt rock spikes out of the ground and the coastline is the most dramatic example of this. You have soft sandy beaches contrasted by sharp and sudden protrusions of black rock. It’s soo cool. I would’ve liked to spend more time there and told James so.
Next, we headed to some ancient beehive huts which were built by arranging stones in circular stacks and then making a roof by making the circles smaller and smaller with no support structures whatsoever. They were dated to be built around 400 AD, but the old lady on whose property they lie has a sign up that says, “Ancient Beehive huts- 2000BC” which I thought was quite funny. She’s a mean old lady too, you have to pay her two euros to go and touch the huts and if you don’t, she has her kids chase you down.
Next stop was Killearney, a small quiet Irish town, but wait! What’s this? Could there be a huge convention of 10,000 Harley Davidson bikers here this weekend? yes, I think there might be. The town was packed! There were beautiful bikes everywhere and big hairy, burly men in leather walking all over. We went to have a big group dinner in a restaurant and I had the smoked stuffed salmon which was stuffed with garlic mashed potatoes and covered in cheese. Soo good. Then James had said we needed to see this show from a guy named Paul, although it sounded like Paw when he said it. It turned out to be like Irish melodrama, something I would see in some off shoot theatre by one guy in LA. It was reminiscent of high school monologues, so not all that great, but at least I got to experience a little look into Irish culture.
Although to Paul’s credit, he might’ve been thrown off by the loud uproar outside and the periodic rumbling of Harley’s being thundered around. He ended the show with this phrase, “Don’t fight mother nature, have sex tonight!” which we all found quite funny.
After that, there was drinking and dancing and fun times. Once again, we were subject to the horrible music they play in clubs in the UK. HORRIBLE!! Like you can’t even dance to them, it’s terrible. You just sort of sway around looking like an idiot all confused. Course that’s not too far off from my normal dancing skills, so perhaps I should’ve been thankful that now I had an excuse. One girl in our group seems to be the only one who took advantage of the severe disproportionality of men and women, especially with all the bikers in town. She said, “I’m gonna go get me an Irishman.” And sure enough, she picked one out of the crowd and he was more then happy to go with her. So easy for the ladies, erg! 
At around two, we stumbled our way back to the hostel and went to sleep. The group I was with were very cool. There was especially this young Australian married couple who were super cool. Adam, the guy, was really funny and we laughed at each other all night and his wife Natalie was this tiny little girl who could really dance something amazing! I was entranced, she was quite good. And she loved to laugh as well. I like people who love to laugh, makes life so much easier.
Most of the trip, I seemed to be the entertainer of the group which was fine by me. I even impressed myself at how funny I was, or maybe it was just the Guinness. Good times.
A few of us got up early to go on a jaunt, which was a horse drawn carriage ride through the National Park that was nearby the town. It was a nice relaxing jaunt and put me in the mood to sleep a long good while on the bus. In fact, James had been promising the entire trip to talk about the IRA and what exactly happened, but said he’d wait till the last day. Finally the moment had arrived and he started out by saying it started in the 1100s and the next thing I remember is waking up to him saying “and there ya have it. Wow, that’s a whole history in 50 minutes, not bad.” I had missed it all. But luckily I wasn’t the only one who had been asleep and we all got him to repeat a summary later on.
Next stop was Blarney castle, Robyn, her boyfriend Ryan, Jennifer (an American engineer), and I went romping around the castle and inside the dungeon which led into this really long tunnel that was too dark to continue into, so I said I’d go get my headlamp and we’d come back. We went on to explore the small castle, which by this point I’d contracted what James calls ABC, “Another Bloody Castle” or “Another Bloody Cathedral.” We waited in the long line to kiss the Blarney stone and I can now confidently say that I have in fact kissed the Blarney stone and feel no different whatsoever. Yay! But supposedly I now have the gift of gab, as if I didn’t have that before.
We went to the gift shop cause the bus was locked and shopped a little bit. Before we were to leave, and Martin our bus driver had unlocked the bus, I grabbed my headlamp and ran back to the dungeon and found that the tunnel went quite far back and was really damp. It ended in a large room I could actually stand up in and had all these names drawn in chalk on the wall. It was neat.
Next we went to the Rock of Cashel which is another monastery founded by St. Patrick and we learned about its history. I found an odd engraving on the side of the chapel of the cathedral depicting pagan symbols, one of a lion and a centaur hunting it. I thought this was odd to find on a Christian chapel and they don’t actually know why it’s there. It was built in the 12th century and perhaps its meant to depict England as the lion and the Celts fighting them, that’s my interpretation anyway. Theirs was that the lion was Christianity and the centaur was paganism and the two fighting each other, but in the figure it looked like the pagan had the upper hand. Whatever, who knows what they meant.
And finally, we arrived back in Dublin after trading emails on the bus. Some of us were staying in the same hostel, the Kilnay house so we said we’d meet up later on to go out. But as it turned out, everyone was quite tired and just went to bed. I went to Temple Bar anyway, which is where all the hang outs are to have a pint and look around. I can’t remember at what point, but at some point that day, I saw a girl sitting in the dining hall smiling and pointing at me and I was confused till I realized it was Andree, the girl I met in Portree, Scotland weeks ago. SO that was cool. Then I went to bed. More in another email.