Lighthouses, castles and cliffs 🏰

Travel Diary Ireland: Day 5/Saturday

Before I start, a little piece of advice from an intellectual (me): Check out the band The Dead Tongues. I know, odd name but damn, I’m all over their music atm… heck, best idea would be to listen to their songs while reading this post(^^) or about Ireland in general, starting with the song Won’t be long. Off u go, my dear friend, you’re welcome.

Wowieee, it’s official now. Half of my time on this beautiful island has passed. Sadly. 😦 but hey, I’m sure I’ll come back some time and in the meantime I can enjoy the wonderful experiences here.

For example, after leaving our B&B (which btw was absolutely freakin awesome, had the best porridge in my entire life) we headed to the bridges of Ross along the coast or rather the cliffs. Freakin awesome. The view was breathtaking the entire time. The bridges of Ross are btw those naturally formed stone bridges on Loop Head peninsula where two of the former three bridges already broke down, only one is still existing. Pretty cool, actually.

Following that we reached the very tip of the peninsula where u can find the Loop Head’s Lighthouse. Ok, I’m gonna be frank with u guys, I don’t really think that things like windmills (from yesterday’s trip)or lighthouses are anything exciting. Sure, they do make a nice motive for photographs but they’re nothing worth paying an entry fee for. That’s prolly why we only wandered around the premises and walked to the end of the cliffs but didn’t enter the lighthouse. Which was ultimately better anyway. Cause standing out there on the cliffs, knowing that there was nothing in front of u but the ocean for quite a distance and that if you kept going straight forward and forward u would eventually arrive in North America was pretty cool.

Loop Head’s Lighthouse

So yeah, the actual attraction we were aiming for today was the Cliffs of Moher. On our way to reach them we stopped at Carrigaholt Castle. Beautifully spooky, hauntingly beautiful. At the time we reached it it was also quite foggy, only underlining this strange atmosphere… we stumbled across this gem by accident actually. ^^

Carrigaholt Castle

Anyway, we continued our way and only made a break for half an hour or something at this adorable little gallery café hybrid thingy in the middle of nowhere. Literally. Which had the best carrot cake I’ve ever tasted. And amazing soya hot chocolate. I got this amazing, super sustainable and healthy lip balm smelling like ginger and cinnamon (yes, u can imagine that’s awesome) and they had this cute dog who I petted and stroke for a while and afterwards he followed me back to the car and stood there for like ages watching me climb into the car. FRIGGIN ADORABLE. So, my dad keeps on driving.

And then we arrived at the mother of all attractions in Ireland. (Not exactly but like, everyone knows about them so I guess they are pretty famous) The mother of all freaking things alike (at least in Ireland. Funnily enough, they’re not even the highest cliffs in Ireland though). The cliffs of Moher.

Cliffs of Moher

Maybe I’m a bit biased after already seeing the amazing cliffs of Kilkee yesterday but they weren’t even that spectacular. Okay, yeah, they were damn impressive, much higher than those in Kilkee but on the other hand, tourists were swarming all over the place (the irony! Again!) and the weather (fog, rain, wind everywhere) kinda dragged me down a bit too. Not that I mind this stormy atmosphere (It actually looks really mystical and cool on the photos) but it got a bit annoying when my freakin raincoat was drained and I was basically wet to the bone. The funny thing, however, was when an especially strong gust of wind came out of nowhere it casually carried me a few metres forward due to its immense strength. Kinda crazy, right??? All together, the visitor’s centre explaining the history of the place and the scenery did make quite a nice memory, I’d say. 🙂

Nevertheless, we decided to spend the rest of the afternoon somewhere where the weather wouldn’t make such a difference and we drove to Galway, apparently the music capital of Ireland. And it was indeed amazing, a few guys were actually playing and singing in the streets. (And they were pretty good too) We had a late lunch at Harvey’s (or sth, I’m not sure anymore haha), I ate this incredibly soft burger (man, the food…) and the dessert turned out to be a cup of ice cream (Saucy chocolate brownie or something) at Murphy’s (a rather known Irish ice cream chain with the most amazing types of ice cream). Despite the terrible weather. Ice cream simply always works. ^^

Galway

After that, we continued our journey to today’s accommodation in Shannonbridge, somewhere about an hour from Galway in the direction of Dublin (cause that’s where we’re headed tomorrow, yaaaay). It’s this little town with like a couple of houses, two pubs and one grocery store and that’s it. Remind me of home somehow ahaha. ^^

And here I am right now, lying in bed, typing this post and dreaming about the cute dog of our host who I played with earlier. For the first time during this trip we’ll actually get up after half past seven tomorrow (OMG whaaaat), so gangster me is staying up late and watching Notting Hill. ^^

I hope u guys had/have an amazing day too! 🙂 see u tomorrow and I hope, I’ll have something a bit more thrilling to tell u ^^