{"id":1719,"date":"2018-05-24T15:47:54","date_gmt":"2018-05-24T20:47:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/?p=1719"},"modified":"2018-05-24T15:47:54","modified_gmt":"2018-05-24T20:47:54","slug":"on-and-below-the-burren","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/?p=1719","title":{"rendered":"On and Below the Burren"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Today was the last of my bus tours out of Galway, down to the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher. It was another really nice day, weather-wise, though there was a little bit of rain at our last photo stop. I’d been to the Cliffs before, and to the Burren, but the weather was much better this time.<\/p>\n

The last tour I’d been on was from a different company1<\/a><\/sup>, so the stops were a little different. I was a little said that we didn’t get to the Poulnabrone Dolmen, this time, but instead we did get to see the Aillwee Cave.<\/p>\n

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The Aillwee Cave is on the side of Aillwee Mountain, and it’s got a pretty good view of the Burren. How gorgeous is that sky?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Inside the cave, it was very dark. Yeah, I know, that’s the way it goes with caves, but this one was less lavishly lit than any other cave I’ve been in. While it was very cool, I got nervous about my footing at some points. Anyway, here’s a shot of some stalactites, stalagmites, and a full column way at the back that looks orange in this picture.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After Aillwee Cave, we went to the Cliffs of Moher, which was the main stop of the day.<\/p>\n

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The Cliffs of Moher are about 200m above the sea. They were used as the Cliffs of Insanity in the movie The Princess Bride.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Waaaaaayyy down at the end of the Cliffs is Hag’s Head, an outcropping that has a small tower (called Moher Tower). It was too far to walk in the time we had there.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I also completed one of my vacation objectives here: I found a nice ring at a little jewellery shop dug into the side of the hills.<\/p>\n

Lunch was in Doolin, and it was nice to go back there, where I had had such a good stay last time. We came in from an unfamiliar direction, so it took me a little thinking to orient myself, but it was cool to realize I recognized where I was, and where McGann’s was from there.<\/p>\n

We stopped along the coast road on the way back to Galway at the Blackhead Lighthouse, which was right in the midst of a lot of the interesting rock formations of the Burren.<\/p>\n

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This is the sort of landscape that makes the Burren the Burren. Weathered limestone with lots of plants growing in the gaps between the slabs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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It being spring, there are a fair number of wildflowers cropping up.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last photo stop was at Dunguaire Castle. Apparently, I’ve been pronouncing it wrong since I read about it. I was calling it “Dun-gwayr,” but apparently it’s “Doon-gory.”<\/p>\n

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Still very picturesque. They were getting ready for one of the medieval feasts they hold there, so we couldn’t really go in to look at the inside.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And then it was back to Galway.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow, I’ve got a ticket for the hop-on, hop-off bus tour of the city of Galway. That’ll make it easy to get around to places like the cathedral. Depending on how things go, I also want to get some more pictures of Shop Street, the main street through the medieval section of the city, and get to the museum across the street.<\/p>\n

But now, doing a little laundry, and relaxing.<\/p>\n

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  1. One that doesn’t seem to exist, anymore. [↩<\/a>]<\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Today was the last of my bus tours out of Galway, down to the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher. It was another really nice day, weather-wise, though there was a little bit of rain at our last photo stop. I’d been to the Cliffs before, and to the Burren, but the weather was much … Continue reading “On and Below the Burren”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[295,283],"tags":[333,264,261,74,75],"class_list":["post-1719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-galway-ireland-2018","category-ireland-2018","tag-aillwee-cave","tag-doolin","tag-galway","tag-the-burren","tag-the-cliffs-of-moher"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8tF5A-rJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1719"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1729,"href":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719\/revisions\/1729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rickneal.ca\/travelblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}