Nothing quite like another 4:30 wake up time. Today it's off for the Cliffs of Moher at the expensive of missing the Bram Stoker festival. I hate those, "sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler" moments. It is also my last night abroad for awhile if you consider that London tomorrow is a layover, so as my bag continues to bulge with excess stuff I don't need, it is time to look at what is in there again... Hmm, these shoes are falling apart and smell like a yeast infection. I can probably toss these since I have nice, new sneakers in the States waiting for me. This shirt hasn't fit me properly in thirty pounds. It's kinda crazy how my brain thinks that wandering around the U.K. is a bit like being stranded on an uninhabited island somewhere in the south Pacific. "But, you might need this for something! You... you can use it to hold turtle meat!"
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| These little guys got me though Bali, Yogyakarta, Jakarta, all over Japan, and Minnesota. |
No pictures of me getting reallllly lucky. I bought my bus ticket online not really knowing where to go. (I have written an entire blog just about how much buses stress me out.) The ticket says from Dublin to Doolin. I am in Dublin now, but how does one catch this bus? Can I just go outside any building in Dublin and little elves or whatever will hail my bus for me, 'cause that would be cool. No, I suspect this company assumes I will know my ass from my elbows and know where to go. Google, Google, Google... Okay. I have narrowed this down to two possible pick up locations. I am not sure where I am supposed to go, but Option B is only a seven minute (!!! LUCKY!!!) walk from my hotel. Option A is a 30 min cab ride. Neither Option is actually mentioned in the reservation email, so there is a chance these are both equally wrong, so let's do the cheap mistake.
No! BAM! This is the right station!!! Awesome! Drop some local currency in the vending machine since nothing was open on the way to the bus stop and jump on the bus for a four hour, relaxing...
Irish woman with two kids sits behind me, is amused I am a "Yank" (really? People outside 1950s TV shows use that word? I am tickled!), and proceeds to yabber on and on about her failed marriage, dead mother, how awful/wonderful Manchester is, the long story about why she is living there now, how awful Turkish men are (her ex is Turkish), and how annoying it is when people tell you their whole life story. I kinda wish I had someone timing the conversation because I do believe that, without exaggeration, she must have filled 3 hours of the 4 hour bus ride with stories of her life while I was asked to give about 15 minutes of answers to questions. Her final judgement for me was that is it great I am traveling solo, how fantastic it is that I am independent, and that is probably not too late for me to meet someone. She then suggested the possibility that I will meet a nice farmer and spend my life in a village somewhere raising sheep. Not terribly likely, but yeah, sure. I'm open to the possibility.
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| Of course, when I see a sheep, I run on top of walls. Animals outside cages are freaky. |
Then the bus drops me, ME, off here. There is a building, a decent sized yellow home with no cars in front of it, and a road that leads back into the village of Doolin. It was one of those great moments where the bus driver actually called out, "no one is going to the pier, right?" and I had to pipe up with a, "Me!" which resulted in a look of bewilderment from the person who knows what he is doing. "Really? You're getting off there? Okay...." I confirm with him that there is one more bus today (in the likely event that I am wrong and no where near where I am meant to be) and step off the bus.
This looks promising. On the other hand, even if that house with ZERO CARS outside of it, isn't my hotel, I have made it--kinda--to the cliffs!
(I am tempted to write some filler here just for the sake of keeping my layout clean and pretty, but I am out of things to say about getting off a bus. Treat this space as that thirty seconds of silence you had in school.) --------------------------
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| View from the road! Okay, if nothing else, I can walk to the cliffs? Maybe hide my bag somewhere? |
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| An ACTUAL skeleton key? |
The B&B is that building! LUCKY!!! I've never stayed at such a comfortable, fancy-feeling place. I mean, it wasn't the Ritz, but it really felt like you were staying with that grandparent who is finically way better off then you or your parents. Best bed I have ever slept on (a King just for me! And a Double to put my bag on!) Pics so I can move on. The point is, nice B&B and I wish I had more than one night here! Sorry I can't get these pics to format nicely. Anyway, should you ever find yourself in Doolin, I can't recommend this place enough. I feel awful because I forgot the owners' names! Ana? Elsa? Something less Frozen-y? http://www.atlanticviewdoolin.ie
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| Too bad about the view. Just the Cliffs. (Sarcasm) |
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| Dining room for the nine guests. |
After dropping my bag and touching everything in my room, I found out that the next bus to the Cliffs was about a four-hour wait, or I could just walk it. The woman at the B&B told me it was about a 2.5 hour walk out of the village, one way, but since it was just about noon, I thought that seemed perfect! Grab some lunch, talk a walk, do the whole stand-on-the-edge-of-someplace-high photo, head back, and be in the hotel 'round six. Perfect! And, in this picture, can you tell just how charming and wonderful this village is? I really don't think you can.
"It's a bit muddy and windy... Be careful."
Let me spare you the punchline. Yes, I fell. No, I didn't get bloody. I did slide down a barely-there slope in the mud, and I mean proper mud, not some damp dirt but deep, squishy, pudding-like mud that goes up to your ankles. So, I looked really nice when I got back into town. What, with my black slacks and Calvin Klein black coat, and mud almost tattooed into my flesh. Awesome. Being a hardcore badass, I did my best to rock my muddy ass as I passed the rare other person on the trail.
Wow, once you start playing with the formatting on Blogger, the editing document gets really confused! Hmmm.. wonder how this is going to look published...
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| Blackberries were in season! I ate a ton of these on the walk up! |
And so I walked. Now, I know everyone talks to themselves. We do. Either in your head or softly aloud. I've become more and more... comfortable? Aware? that I have rather long, loud conversations with myself. And with characters I'd like to use in stories someday. I think I am walking the line of having imaginary friends, which is probably not cool since I am thirty, but the walk to the cliffs was fun because I think I got into a debate with myself for awhile there. I don't need to narrate walking. You put one foot there, the next one swings up and around. Ya get it. Here are some pics from the walk. The only thing I really can't convey in these pictures is the wind and cold. It was wonderfully, thrillingly windy. Sustained winds must have been twenty miles an hour with gusts of thirty-five. There was a ledge on the side of the cliffs where some German boys and I played a game called, "jump straight into the air and see how far the wind carries you until you touch the ground." (Not TOWARD the cliffs' edges. The wind was greatly amplified by the cliffs in places. It was fantastic!) 
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| My hotel is somewhere over there... |
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| Okay, remember this view. |
So, I had a merry time. Met some other tourists from Germany, the States, and Poland. We helped each other take pictures. I made it to the area of the visitors center but didn't care to go in. Picture.. uh... I need a visual. Okay.
A----------------B---x--------------------------------C------------------------------------------D-----------------E
Let's say C is the visitors center at the highest point of the cliffs, okay? D is the village of Doolin. E is my hotel. B is another structure, a castle/tower on the cliffs, and A is the starting point of the cliffs just like D on my GREAT map I've typed for you. Okay. Play along. E to C took me about 2.5 hour.s. I then pressed on to X on that same map up there. That took another hour. It is at this point I check my watch and discover that it is 4:45. What time is sunset? That path I took wasn't exactly an easy trail, despite the pictures, since parts of of were extremely mudding, you have to climb over things, pass through things, go up and down stairs... on the edge of a cliff. I-I-I-I... I don't wanna do this in the dark.
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| Yeah. Mary falls. Time to go home. |
I think I can make it. I'll just hurry!
In my heart, I think I am a mountain goat. I'm big. I'm awkward. I love bounding down hills. Yes, sure, sometimes I fall, but not all that often considering how often I do this. So, I am running down every slope that I can. Sure, sometimes it's too steep, muddy, slippery (damn you, wet grass!), or unstable to stop when I want to stop and my heart rate goes way past my 160 THR for aerobics, but I am grinning like an idiot. Those wonderful moments when you try to stop but can't? Awesome. Anyway, it is at this point, WHEN I AM WALKING ON A NEARLY FLAT BIT OF SMOOTH TRAIL, I bust my ass. Just, completely do a back-flop in the mud. Lovely. Feet are soaked. I've got mud in my pants. Ahhh, yay, me. Do I learn anything? Of course not! If anything, now that I am filthy, I figure the pressure is off to avoid falling and make it back into town in under 1 hour and 45 min. Now, I could have gotten there a lot faster, but running down hills in shoes that are too big and rub, rub, rub, GRIND, rub, against your heels can cause minor blistering. (edit: a week later, it looks like I have a blackish, purple prune glued to my heel.) Go to the hotel, wash my coat in the shower ('cause I am classy), throw the trousers away (they're too big, anyway), and recycle a pair of twice-retired Dickies from my dirty-clothes pouch. (Eh, I wasn't sweating in Norway or Finland; they are fine.) After all that exercising and character building, it was time for a drink. I toss on my last pair of trousers (which I threw away that night because they were giant in the waist and two inches too short in the legs. I often wonder how I end up buying so many clothes that don't fit me.) and head back into Doolin to have dinner at the pub. Did the beef and and Guiness stew at O'Conner's. Fantastic. They were also having live music that night and one lady was doing traditional dancing. It was a nice mix of out-of-towners and locals. I ended up sitting with a guy named Mike (born in Doolin in the 30s) and his friend (born near Doolin post-1960) for a couple of hours.
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| Irish dancing doesn't look impressive in pictures, does it? Same girl from the poster. |
Anyway, leaving the pub I remember being invited to some other event going on that night, but it was already...uh... 9.... (shame on me) and I couldn't find the other pub. It was dark; I was drunk. Judge me. Decided to call it a night, head back to the hotel, and get a quasi-decent night sleep. OH!!! And I had already been up since 4:30! Okay, that's kind of forgivable then. The next day it was back to Dublin and off to London. Time to begin the journey home!
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| The hotel offered so many choices for breakfast--different ways to serve eggs and meat--but I opted for the cheese plate! Hell yeah! Cheese! Not a huge fan of the Irish soda bread, though, in general. |
Last pack out! Tonight, in London, I will be sans Purple Bag. Hell, I wish I didn't have my laptop so I could just check my backpack, too, and just put a pair of undies and socks in my purse. Yeah, kinda sad I missed the Bram Stoker festival, looks like everyone there is having fun, but the hotel here? The Cliffs? O'Conner's? Doolin? The cows, berries, and mud? The AMAZING surf smashing into the cliffs?
No regrets. None. Zero.
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| A good spot for Catch the Wind! |
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| That's O'Brien Tower! Yay!!! |
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| I didn't die! Yay, me! |
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