Leaving Cork was bittersweet. The music and general vibe of the town was great, but I didn’t care for where we were staying and the general look of folks hanging out near us.
Doolin was expected to be different. Most people stay in Galway. It’s a popular town to see on the west coast. From Galway, people visit the Aran Islands and the Cliffs of Moher. We chose Doolin for a couple of reasons.
The first is that both the Islands and Cliffs are easier to access from Doolin. We were able to hike to the cliffs from our adorable hostel and we were also able to walk to the port to get to the islands. We were also able to walk a few miles to the nearest grocery store (Life before horses/cars had to be awful).
The second reason for visiting Doolin was the beer and music festival.
From Cork we took the bus to Doolin. There were many stops and a bus change before we finally arrived to town. Doolin has about four shops and five places to stay, all within about 200 feet of each other, and surprisingly the bus made four stops for this place. When a few of us gave puzzling looks and asked questions about which stop would be right for us, the bus driver told us he would stop again back in front of the heart of the city at the intersection of the only two roads in town. Or at least that’s what six of us understood him to say. But as we began to get further away from the city, now in some pasture land, Elizabeth and I grew concerned, as did the four other people we would come to meet in a few seconds.
As I got up to inquire to the driver about that stop he didn’t make, or did but didn’t tell us it was a formal stop, a young Spanish woman got up first and asked the driver about the stop in Doolin. He was confused, as we all were, because we were out of Doolin, he had made all his stops, and we were headed on to other intersections in the middle of nowhere in Ireland.
This Spanish woman relayed the drivers information to me in English and her companion in Spanish. When I learned she was Spanish, I quickly moved up front to let the driver know that it wasn’t just these two lost Spaniards who needed to get off back in Doolin, it was two bumbling Americans as well. Two other girls showed up from the back of the bus to indicate they too were confused by the stops in Doolin and were still onboard.
The driver was pretty unhappy. We were on a road with 1.5 lanes total, no way he could turn around if he wanted to, unless he wanted to crush whatever crops were in the fields. We were also headed far away from Doolin, a good ten minutes away by vehicle. He intimated that we would need to wait and catch another bus, there was nothing he could do and it was out fault for screwing up so badly.
Since I was the only native speaker among the group (I guess Elizabeth counts too, but she was probably listening to a podcast and could have ridden the bus all over Ireland without a care in the world), I came to the defense of the group of six. It is probably worth mentioning that the six of us were at least half of the remaining bus travelers.
As I was lamenting our cause to the driver and his lack of proper notice back in Doolin, another massive bus came driving up from the other direction. As I saw the bus head towards us, I began to think that not only were we not going to get back to Doolin, but I couldn’t see how we were gonna get past this other bus to get to Galway.
Our driver though, a quick thinking chap, parked our bus in the middle of the road, told us to sit tight, and hopped out. He headed over to the other bus, chatted for a few minutes, and came back to let us know we were doing a prisoner exchange.
So we got all our luggage off our transit bus and moseyed on over to our future transportation situation. We boarded a bus almost completely full. Full of tourists looking extremely confused. And as our drivers did an amazing dance to pass one another without destroying buses or crops, we explained to our new passengers why the hell we were showing up on their tour of west Ireland midway through and in the middle of a back road.
Our new bus driver, speaking English because this bus turned out to be an English speaking tour asked the six of us where we were staying. I, as the nearest to the front, and self appointed UN Ambassador for the group, informed the driver that the six of us didn’t know each other at all so we had no clue where each of us was staying. So he dropped us off near downtown and that was the last we saw of those confused tourists or of our four new friends.
Nothing else in Doolin was as exciting, but it sure was beautiful.
The place we were staying was an adorable old stone house. We were late booking, so we split our nights between the tepee in the backyard and shared room in the stone house. I didn’t not care where we laid our heads, but Elizabeth was excited for us to spend a few nights glamping in the backyard.
After our big bus fiasco, we decided it would be best to travel on foot to avoid any more issues, so we marched off to see the Cliffs of Moher. They’ve been in a Harry Potter movie recently, so they have become even more popular, but our path up to the main spot was relatively empty.
It was dangerous, as the path at times was inches away from a one-two hundred foot drop, but the views were spectacular. The weather was nice and we had a great time walking around enjoying the scenery. Cows, castles, coastline. I think that sums up Ireland and Scotland really.
We did head to the grocery store after the cliffs. Just a another few miles to get something to eat.
The next day was Elizabeth’s birthday and she wanted to spend it on the Aran islands so we caught a boat out there. People rent bikes and ride around looking at all the ancient buildings. We did the same, but I think we spent almost as much time trying to find the puffin beach and seeing if any of the thick wool sweaters looked good on us. We failed on both accounts. We also managed to squander our opportunity to go to the main fort on the island. But we did get to enjoy our picnic away from anyone, mostly because we ate while lost and looking for those puffins.
Just before we left we made a quick visit to the islands grocery store to buy a variety of local brews (the island had a proper grocery story unlike the gas station grocery store we went to the day before). Imagine the birthday girl with a backpack full of beer trying to ride a bike back to the dock. At one point she wobbled and fell off the bike and you could hear all the bottles jangling in her backpack. Luckily one woman helped set her straight again.
That night we met a Swiss couple (drinking a couple of Budweisers with the American flag slapped on them no less) who were traveling around Ireland to surf. After talking a bit with them, we decided to go out and have couple of beers at the local pubs. I had been to one of the pubs the night before for music, but when we arrived the music hadn’t started. Once the music did start is wasn’t as traditional as we hoped, so we headed down the street to the other pub in town. After a drink or two there we called it a night. (Elizabeth says- All in all it was a wonderful birthday. I’m so thankful that I could enjoy it abroad.)
The next day we did ourselves a favor and stayed in all day. We worked on getting our blog written, travel plans made for the final two weeks in Europe, and other housekeeping things. We needed the break and the time to relax.
That night in town was the real reason we came to visit. It was a craft beer and music festival. I had been enjoying trad music the entire time on our Irish portion of the trip, even here in Doolin, but this was going to be regular music, with only a bit of an Irish flavor. The craft beer was going to be completely Irish though.
The experience did not disappoint. The music was a lot of fun and the beer was quite interesting. There was even a brewery that only did sours, so that was a neat experience for us to try our first Irish sours. We met a lot of great people, had some decent food, and some excellent beer. We stayed til the bitter end, not wanting to miss out on the last little bit of Irish nightlife we were going to have.
We left Doolin on our way to Dublin with a couple of days to spare in Ireland. Elizabeth had surprised me in Dublin with Brú na Bóinne, but they were done with tours for the day because the site is incredibly popular. I had never heard of it and was embarrassed to admit such, but we were determined to see it before we left Ireland and altered out entire Ireland trip so we could get back to see it.
Brú na Bóinne is two sites, Newgrange and Knowth. On our tour, we were able to visit Newgrange. It was built around 3300 BC, before the pyramids of Giza or even Stonehenge existed.
The sites are the home to passage tombs, mounds built for funeral rituals. The Newgrange site has the famous triple spiral carving along with some diamond carvings all done on rocks nestled snugly together to form a narrow chamber and room deep inside the tomb.
The big day to visit here is on Winter Solstice when sunlight (if it’s not cloudy) peeks in through a slit above the only entrance/exit to the tomb. Sunlight illuminates the entire interior of the tomb all from this narrow gap above the doorway. When you visit, they replicate the act for you so you can get an idea of what was happening over 5000 years ago, when those who built it were using it for their spiritual needs.
We also visited the Hill of Tara, and ancient royal site of Ireland from way back when. Our guide said 142 kings were crowned here. We spent most of our time goofing around on the mounds.
And that closes out Ireland. We hopped on a plane the next day and flew to Berlin. Or last two weeks of traveling were upon us. Neither of us was happy about it ending, but we were excited to be going someplace new. And Berlin is pretty famous.
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