Liquid Sunshine

Today we took a bus tour and got to adventure out to the west coast of Ireland. Once again, absolutely everything was emerald green and beautiful beyond description. 

First of all, our bus was full of Bavarians in full on lederhosen and it made me so excited for Germany. The first stop was to King John's Castle. It was pretty brief and we just had time to snap a picture: 

The next stop was the Cliffs of Moher. It was super rainy and windy but we braved the monsoon to take in the breath-taking scenery anyway. The Irish are optimists about their constant rain and refer to it as liquid sunshine. Awww. 

Next, we went to Galway Bay, which is covered in holey limestone. The tourguide, Shane (who was totally awesome) brought a cricket bat and we all took turns swatting rocks as far into the ocean as we could while standing on the edge of the cliffs. 100% safe. 

For lunch we stopped in a little town at a pub and Jules and I both had the best Irish beef stew in all of Ireland. For the rest of the day we rode on the bus and the tour guide pointed out fun things like imported alpacas and fairy castles. 

Fairies though. Let me tell you about fairies. They are no Tinkerbell. A long, long time ago, the fairies got all salty because Christianity took over Ireland so everyone stopped believing in them. The fairies became nasty and mean and made new homes underneath the hawthorn trees. For generations the farmers have been too afraid to disturb them and will leave a hawthorn tree untouched even if it is smack in the middle of their farm field out of fear of bad luck. There is even a roundabout built around a hawthorn tree because contractors refuse to disturb them. Crazy stuff. 

One last stop we made was at Corcomroe Abbey. 

We learned that the five German stone masons who came to Ireland to design the abbey did such a stunning job that the king decided to have their heads chopped off so that the stone masons could never build a rival abbey that was just as beautiful. The ultimate form of flattery? Idk.

We got back around 7pm and were absolutely exhausted. We went to a pub for one last Irish meal and it was everything we hoped it would be. I had Dublin coddle (a delish soup with vegetables and sausage) and Julie had beef and Guinness pie.

This was a perfect ending to our adventures in Ireland. Now off to bed so we can get up in 5 hours to catch our next flight!