Today we shall make up for the Ring of Kerry by filling the day up with beautiful views and castles and quite a bit of history.
  | First up, the Bunratty Folk Park - and of course here in Ireland "folk park" does not include a bunch of a fake, era style store fronts, but an actual castle with an appropriately bloody history and a collection of brightly colored, thatched roof cottages, all with a strange musty smell of peat. While we were there we got to have some delicious, possibly peat flavored, apple crumble - made right there by bakers in the thatch roof kitchens (kitchens being a open hearth fire place, bakers being women dressed in long dresses, aprons, and strange puffy white hats, got to keep with the times and all).   |
Thatched Roof Cottage at Bunratty Castle. Ireland. All Rights Reserved, 2012
 We traveled along our way , but before we could make it to the Cliffs of Moher, we ran into a problem: The GPS ceased to work. We kind of felt like that cow there. Staring in a kind of stupid frustration at a blank screen and a bunch of signs on the road trying to figure out how we were going to make it... anywhere. |  |
The Cliffs of Moher. A bit of sun, but if you look to the back you can see the rain already coming in again. Panorama built with 8 photos
 The O'Brien Tower at the Cliffs of Moher | As you can see, we did in fact make it somewhere, and rather than pretending we could figure out where anything was (which, despite the fact that the entire country is smaller than Arizona, would be surprisingly difficult to do considering any of the places you're planning to stay at night our down long, single line roads where you're far more likely to get lost than find where you're going.) we made a stop in a little town and picked up a new "SAT NAV" A SAT NAV. How adorable! Without a single American map of course. We did eventually make it to the Cliffs of Moher though and watched the storm role in, the line of rain coming in closer and closer on the Atlantic Ocean. |
| As it turns out, besides having a gorgeous view, the cliffs also happened to be the only place in Ireland where they were concerned over the safety of their visitors. What started out as simple "Whoops! Watch out for that edge you comical stick figure!" caricatures got continuously more serious as you walked down the path (Need a Samaritan? Cause Ireland cares.) We got to a certain point and they no longer even limited there signs to the inside of the giant rock fence. They were throwing them right off on the edge of the cliffs just in case you'd decided to ignore all the rest of the signs and were really intent on staring straight down the cliff edges. Head the other way down the path and you get to a wall covered with quite the collection of warning signs that people are clearly paying a TON of attention to. There are definitely not dozens of people walking behind that fence and all the way down the muddy path on the extremely dangerous, unstable cliff edge that is hazardous private property. No surprise, despite the huge amount of signs, it was still left up to the public whether they wanted to follow the signs, and there didn't seem to be anyone of authority to stop the troublemakers. |     |
Our path to our next B&B took us through The Burren (amazing amount of sun for the day, right?). Over the years the rain and the settlers and the sheep have all worn through the landscape to the rock underneath, flat on the top with deep crevices from the the wear of the weather. We made a short stop there to visit the Poulnabrone Dolmen (in Irish, meaning the Hole of Sorrows), one of the many wedge tombs in Ireland.
Anyone else see the second Dolmen in the sky?
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