Day 30 (Day 1 of Haggerty Clan)

7:00 am I am totally thrilled that my family will finally be here to enjoy the birthplace of half of our heritage. After their long plane flight and my 3 hour bus ride (which due to Kelly’s great flight attendant hook-up and the high cost of everything here cost about the same) we will meet at the Cliffs of Mohr. The cliffs made the first cut of 50 places for the “New Seven Wonders of the World.” Even though the cliffs have been here since roughly the Ice age, there must be some reason for the need of a revote.

9:30 am It is cool, windy and rainy. My family’s first experience of Ireland is one of sideways rain and gale force winds. Better to not have a flawed first impression. The cliffs are amazing, but they don’t let you get that close to the edge. Don’t think they will make the 7 wonders, but they are worth seeing.

Luckily I snagged some hooded jackets they were throwing out in Clare-Galway, since the Haggerty clan did not heed my warnings to dress warmly and dress for rain. So now the three girls have matching white jackets and appear to be the Clare-Galway cheerleading team, since they are obviously too short to play basketball.



11:00 am Head down the highway to see the Burren, an interesting geographical area where grass grows out of rock.
11:02 am Dad is asleep in back seat.
11:05 am Kate is asleep.

11:15 See a few more of the old castles and cemetaries and then stop to see some interesting parts of the Burren. Very serious in that it seems grass grows right of this rock.
11:45 am After going down a road that is supposed to be a shortcut and show us the most famous part of the Burren, it appears there is no way this road could be what we are looking for. I mean it is barely wide enough for one car, how can this be a main tourist thoroughfare. So we pull off at a house to turn around and possibly ask directions. And the house ends up being a holistic center with these hippies sitting around some rock and meditating intensely, if intensely is the right word for being really into your meditating. Luckily a loose hippie who isn’t yet meditating informs us that the road will indeed take us where we want to go. I thought hippies were an American thing, but it appears they are an international craze.

11:50 am Dad and Kate are again asleep
12:05 pm The burren is very neat especially the limestone mountains that look like smaller and smaller pancakes stacked on one another. Pancakes sans syrup of course which is always disappointing.



1:00 pm Dinner at a diner just above a turlough. A turlough is a disappearing lake. How does it disappear you ask? Well a leprechaun drinks it up. Actually, because the bottom is limestone the rain water literally slips between the cracks and pops back up in nearby springs. But in the winter months when the water table is higher the rainwater has no where to go. So like the Canadiens that visit Florida, the lakes disappear ever y summer to return again the next winter. Some are actually tidal and will disappear and reappear twice a day.
1:30 pm We all have a hot toddy, the famous hot whiskey drink with lemon juice. It is good! After lunch we see the huge Dolem. They think this was a religious thing for the ancient pagan Celtic people. How the heck do they get that giant rock up there? No one knows. And to compare I pick up a rock the size of a shoe box and it is easily 50 pounds. These were either really strong people or they were helped by the same aliens who helped build the pyramids and Stonehedge.