Day Trip

Yesterday, Monday July 11, we headed out of Dublin early towards Galway to try to locate a small town called Kilconly where Herb's great grandfather and great grandmother were buried.  We found the town, found the graveyard and, surprisingly, found the grave site quite quickly. 

A number of members of the family are buried there.  The church in the background here is an old Protestant church which was been closed for quite a long time.  We talked to some local people and learned a bit more about the town.  Apparently alot of O'Neills still live around there.  It was Herb's grandfather who immigrated to America.  I think we would all agree that it was interesting day.

As we drove towards Galway for lunch we came across our first sighting of a peat bog.  Of course, we had to stop and take lots of pictures.  These little piles of peat were about 14-18 inches high and carefully arranged to optimize the drying process.  People come back later and put them into plastic bags for sale. The pieces are very light weight and look similar to the paper logs you can buy at home - but much much lighter.  (We looked around for the gold, weapons and bodies we had learned about having been pulled out of bogs, but we didn't find any, of course :) .

There isn't much to see in Galway and it was the first day of a big Arts Festival so we didn't hang around long.  The city looked much like Dublin only a little quainter.  We headed south into an area called "The Burren" towards the Cliffs of Moher on the western coast of Ireland.  We stopped many times to take pictures of the magnificent and changing landscape as we went. 

The Cliffs of Moher did not disappoint us at all.  They are spectacular.  They are even in the running for one of the new 7 Wonders of the World (I must remember to go vote on that.)  The cliffs were formed 320 million years ago by a river carrying sediment.  The cliffs were here before most of Ireland was here.  Hard to comprehend stuff like that.

We had a fabulous dinner at an Italian restaurant in Ennis - one that came highly recommended by our Rick Steve's guide book.  We were very pleased with our choice and rode quite contently back to Dublin after a wonderfully full day of seeing a bit of Ireland.