We woke early for our 7:30am breakfast, and Orla made a gorgeous spread with yogurt and fruit in a coupe, strawberry smoothie shooters, brown oat bread, fresh fruit, crepes with fruit, orange juice, tea and coffee, truly a feast. Then we packed up, said farewell, and headed out to the Cliff of Moher, about a 90-minute drive. We arrived 15 minutes early, as we paid for tickets for the off-peak period and had to arrive by 11:00am. We parked easily, and when we left we could see how crowded it had gotten with cars, plus many busses.
The cliffs were heavily fogged in, and Larry was feeling disappointed. We went into the visitor center and watched the welcome video (complete with water spray when the video dived with a cormorant-type bird into the water), and saw the educational visits. By the time we came out it had warmed up and the fog had started to lift a bit, and we headed up to the tower area for our photo re-enactment. Luckily it was a long ramp up alongside the steps, with many beautiful vista point as the cliffs emerged from the fog. We took lots of photos of course, and then finally got to the top where the ancient tower was. First we did the re-enactment photo, with Larry positioned exactly as Jim was in a phot form their previous trip about 15 years ago, and success! This meant a lot to Larry, so I was very glad that the fog had lifted enough to really show the tower and the cliffs. There was a golf-cart-type vehicle to bring folks up and down the hill, so I decided to take that down (as up is still easier than down) and Larry and Claudia waked. We visited the lovely gift shop and got some postcards to go with the stamps I had gotten a few days before. An important mission accomplished!
We headed for Lahinch, but managed to follow the Garmin onto a tiny one-lane road that ended up scraping the side of the car, so we had to divert to get back to a larger road. Driving on the narrow roads is indeed taxing. We stopped in Lahinch for lunch (mussels for me, soup for Larry and Claudia and always great brown bread) and on to the famous Lahinch golf club, which Larry had visited before. He wanted to get a new logo hat, and Claudia got one for JJ also … another mission accomplished!
We then drive to Killimer for the ferry to Tarbert. We missed the hourly ferry by about 2 minutes, so ended up second in line and had some time to walk around and see the water, which was nice. The ferry went quickly, about 25 minutes, and then we were off to Tralee where we were staying for the evening. We found the Castlemorriss B&B, which was a minor noble’s home built in 1790. It was a very gracious old house, and had a large room on the top floor (two flights up, no elevator) with a kind bed and a twin bed. It also had a barely working toilet requiring hand manipulation of the flapper after each flush to refill, no small thing with three of us use the same bathroom. We went to dinner at Cassidy’s, recommended by our host, which was of course busy and loud on a Friday night. The fish I had and Claudia’s chicken and Larry’s scallops were all tasty, but it was hard to even find someone to take our payment. The bed was comfortable and we slept well.
We adapted our plan for the next day, instead of doing the Ring of Kerry which takes many hours and can be exhausting to drive, we decided to drive the Dingle Peninsula for a bit, then to Kilkenny for the eastern part of the Ring, and then down to Bantry.
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