At the Edge of the Cliffs of Mohr: Ireland Vacation 5

Our last bus tour!  I hope this shot of Bunratty Castle helps demonstrate that 1) I am definitely on a bus, and 2) I am using my phone camera.  Many of my pictures are unusable for reasons of getting other things in the way, or of being blurry.  I am trying to post the best 10% of what I took.

Once we got into the castle, there was this guy in the Great Hall talking to us about the castle and its history.  I missed a lot of it because we were far back, and the accent was a little hard to decipher.  I got that the place was old (the 1400s?) and that they had large groups eating in there sometimes. Sorry.  On some of this stuff, I think Alison and I are going to have to read more or see a YouTube video.

 

I did get that they liked big tapestries.

We went to try to see some rooms higher up in the castle.  To get to them, you had to travel these narrow staircases that only accommodated people going up or down.  There was not enough space to do both.  We finally got up to a pantry room, only to find ourselves stuck there for ten minutes, as the stairs were too crowded with people behind us, who wanted to get into the room, but it was too crowded to go forwards or backwards.   Briefly, we thought we might have to live in that room, but it slowly cleared up.

The Bunratty grounds were huge, with many other buildings and homes to see.  One was a schoolhouse.  One room of the schoolhouse was occupied by a group of schoolchildren singing The Wheels Go Round and Round.  Love their uniforms!  They looked prepared for the rain.  It rains a lot in Ireland that time of year.  By some miracle, Alison and I avoided the rain, except for some brief sprinkles in Belfast, and a short smattering on the day we left Dublin for the airport to go back home.

The highlight of the day - the Cliffs of Mohr!

Here's brief proof that I was actually on this trip.

This is about as close to the edge of the cliffs as I got.  There were other spots where people would climb past the fence and stand closer to the edge.  Some even sat on the edge and dangled their feet over it.  given the wind, these people were insane. 

Walking to another section of the cliffs, we found a memorial with an inscription, "For all those who have lost their lives on the Cliff of Mohr".  Watching those near the edge, I had no doubt that that occurred.  I just didn't want to be witness to it.

I find that I'm not so much afraid of heights for myself, as I am watching other people (particularly children) near heights.

Another view of the cliffs.  That would be some fancy beachfront property.

Another thing special about the park is that there was only one bathroom for men and women.  You just had separate enclosed inside a large facility.  One of the effects of this was that men had to wait in as long a line as women normally had to wait in.   I don't know how comfortable I was with it, but I had to admit - if we had it in the states, it would end a lot of silly arguments as who could go to whose bathroom.

As we traveled on, we came to a large section of Ireland called the Burren.

I'm not even going to pretend this is my writing.  This comes straight from Wikipedia - The Burren is a region of County Clare in the southwest of Ireland. It’s a karst landscape of bedrock incorporating a vast cracked pavement of glacial-era limestone, with cliffs and caves, fossils, rock formations and archaeological sites.

Yeah.  That's what it was.  It felt otherworldly.  I loved it.

Proof that Alison was on the trip as well, as she sits in The Burren.


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More to come!