Galway- 27th till 29th September

Two locations for the price of one with this post!

Our first stop was Galway, and as we were feeling lazy - pretty much all we did was have a bit of a walk and go out to lunch. The restaurant was called Kai, and it is owned and run by a nice kiwi lass and her Irish husband.

We stayed at Salthill, which is a small seaside town on the outskirts of Galway.

Salthill - a nice contrast between the kids jumping in sea in the background, and the rather more sensibly dressed gentleman in the foreground.

Galway town square, and one suspicious person wearing a panda hat.

Our lunch at Kai restaurant. We considered just staying there and drinking our way through to the dinner service, but we were a bit full.

Galway Cathedral.

Our 'American Beauty' moment - these bottles are sitting in a whirlpool, and every now and then one of them would go nose down start spinning at top speed (as per the red one). Curiously fascinating.

My awesome beard. As we don't have a mirror over the handbasin in the van, and I'm obviously not shaving at the moment - I don't look in the mirror very often. I'm always slightly surprised when I do.

Our next stop was in Knock. Knock is very famous amongst the Godly for being the scene of an apparition of Mary, St Joseph, and St John the Evangalist in 1879. The gable end of the church where the apparition was seen has reportedly been responsible for hundreds of cures over the years. I can vouch for this, I had a 'floater' in one of my eyes (an annoying floaty speck), and it now seems to be gone. Which is grand, because it was annoying and had been there for a while.

The site now has several churches, a shrine, a huge basilica, museum and various other related buildings. This will sound disrespectful, but the closest analogy I can think of is that it is kind of like a religious theme park. It is all very tastefully done though, and even though I am not Christian myself, I could certainly appreciate the spirituality of the place. It was also quite a unique site, we haven't seen anything quite like it before. Over a million people visit each year.

The Basilica - it is HUGE!

This is the gable wall of the old church. It has been boarded over because so many people took samples of the render (for cures) that the wall became structurally unsound. The things hanging on the wall are crutches which people have left behind after being cured.

This cross marks the spot where Pope John Paul II gave a speech on the centenary of the apparition. 500,000 people turned up to hear him speak.

The new shrine that is on the site of the old gable wall where the apparition was.

Inside the shrine.

No cleavage, no muffin tops and no battlers.

This is a segment of the old gable wall where my miraculous cure occurred.

Killarney- 24th till 27th September

We spent a few days in Killarney, in the south west corner of Ireland.  It's a very beautiful part of Ireland and probably the most "Irish" scenery we have come across.  

One of the highlights was a tour around the Ring of Kerry.  This was one of the first bus tours we have ever done and it was actually pretty good!  We did a tour because we had been told that the roads were awful and terribly narrow (buses are only allowed to travel in an anti-clockwise direction) but they turned out to be fine, definitely no worse than others we have been on.  Doing the tour did, however, provide us with other opportunities we wouldn't have had, such as the sheep dog demonstration!  It was actually strangely fascinating to watch the farmer control the two dogs with whistles and word instructions.  It didn't sound like the words my Dad used to use for the dog though.....!

Being on a bus also gave us a chance to completely relax and enjoy the scenery....

One of Killarney's lakes, taken from the bus.

An ancient stone circle.  Stone circles were built during the Bronze age for ritual and ceremonial purposes.

At the tip of the peninsula.  As you can tell it's a pretty grey day.  It's also really cold and very windy.  So naturally that's an ice-cream van on the right there!

The Sneem River.

Statue of Steve, the Crusher, Casey.  Grrrrrrr.

A Panda Sculpture donated to the town of Sneem by the Peoples Republic of China.  Looks strikingly like Donatello from the TMNT's to me.

Every Irish person we talked to on this day kept saying how lucky we were with the weather?!

Killarney itself was definitely a tourist town, with all that that entails.  We did manage to find a good organic food market though and a great restaurant, the Smokehouse.

Rib-tastic

Crab-claws.  Definitely one of my favourite things in the world at the moment.

Rack of lamb makes Morgan a happy boy.

 After leaving Killarney we headed north to the Cliffs of Moher.  The Cliffs take there name from an old fort that once stood at the Southern most end of the cliffs and are one of Ireland's most popular tourist destinations.  They were pretty spectacular.

Spot the New Zealanders- jandles (check), shorts and wooly hat (check), rugby jumper (check).

Clearly Morgan finds this very, very boring.

Awwwwww.

 Our drive north from the Cliffs of Moher to Galway was probably one of our favourite drives yet.  As we headed away from the Cliffs we had incredible views out over the green fields and ocean.  We then descended to a plain where we drove between rounded hills completely devoid of any vegetation.  The road hugged the coast with gorgeous inlets, picturesque houses and stone fences. The area is known as The Burren, which means "great rock" in Irish.

View from the van.

Descending down onto the Burren

Barren hills of the Burren 

That shadow is from the motorhome.  By god it's big.

This is the first in my series of "Superfluous road signs".