Day One: Flying to Ireland

Our flight to Dublin left at 9 pm.  It was a short flight; only six hours.  Aer Lingus is nice airline. Clean, reasonable prices for wine, and very nice and efficient flight attendants.  The only thing I didn't care for was that they kept the lights on and provided dinner at what, for us was 11 pm.  I don't think they turned off the lights until three hours into the flight.  We only got a couple of hours of sleep.

Our bus driver and tour guide is PJ (it stands for Patrick Joseph).  PJ tells a lot of jokes when he tells us about the history of the places we're driving through.  Historically, Ireland was completely forested. The story goes that if a squirrel rsn up a tree, it could go to the other end of the island without ever coming down from a tree.  But, according to PJ, it would probably be quite lost.

We slept a little on the us before stopping for breakfast.  

The roadside travel plazas have good food and fresh coffee.

We had a full day before checking into our hotel in Galway.  We stopped at the Cliffs of Moher, which were pretty spectacular.

These are about 700 feet.  This was as close to the edge as I was getting.

We also met our Irish guide, Lorna.

"I will take you all around."

Then we passed through the Burren, which are limestone fields which account for a large proportion of the Ireland's flora.

This landscape goes on in all directions for miles and miles and miles.

Over 75% of Ireland's ecological diversity is found in th Burren.

From here we went straight to the Clybaun Hotel for our three night stay in Glaway.