Healing Travels: 40 Days for Peace: The Cliffs of Insanity: day 29

12 July: Sunday

This is Mack dictating and mom typing

We wake up. Today is the day. The day we see the 'Cliff's of Insanity' (aka The Cliffs of Moher). After a lovely breakfast from Helen and her 12 year old grandson who was as quick as a pistol, we jumped in Gerard and ventured to the cliffs along with another 1000 tourists and tour buses. You have to pay to see the Cliffs of Moher if you want to park without gettting a ticket...lame, but we did it. Me being young and fit and agile, raced to the top of the cliffs with my slow old mother behind me...Mom, just kidding, you made it look good. We waited to turn around til we reached the top of the stairs and when we turned around, it was a sight to behold. We hopped the cattle fence and literallywalked along the edge of the cliff and my mom had a panic attack as I tettered on the edge of the cliff to look down. After a slight convincing, my mother crawled over and looked with me. We snapped a couple of "I'm at the Cliffs of Insantity" photos and jumped in our Gerard car to the Burren National Forest to the Burren.

The Burren is a place that is covered with rocks and you can't pick the flowers or they will die in your hands because of some kind of geological reason, that I don't care, I was just sad that I couldn't pick flowers. We made it to the Ailwee Cave because mom and I love caves. After paying a hefty price of 21 euros to get into the cave, we went into their cheese shop and ate all of their samples of cheese and fudge because we spent our lunch money on the cave. The cave was cool and we saw what it looked like to be completely dark. The cave was discovered in 1943 when a sheppard lost his dog.

After leaving the cave, we went to the oldest known tomb spot in Ireland. We couldn't find a name for it so we spotted a tour bus and pulled over and low and behold, it was the tomb. (I picked a flower anyway) After looking at these rocks piled on top of each other (super creative) we drove to Galway, not knowing where we were staying the night. We crossed our fingers and said a prayer and landed at Teach-na-Coiribe B&B, a cute B&B just a 20 minute walk to downtown. We put on some lipsstick and walked into Galway.

Galway is a mix of the Renaissance Festival meets New York Ctiy. People were performing in the streets, different languages were being spoken, there were men in kilts and lots of pubs...one of the oldest pubs in Ireland...Ceagan Ua Neactain. We stopped at a local place called Quay's which was recommended to us by many locals. Shared some delicious chicken curry and mom had 3 Galway bay oysters, but no beer (damn that cave!) On the way back to our B&B, we ventured into the oldest pub in Ireland. Well, the Oldest pub in Ireland smelled like vomit, so we ventured back out to our B&B.