To Imagine Is Everything: galway 2012

A very full day in Galway. Upon arrival, we had to tender (ride in our lifeboats) from ship to dock. This may be our only tender port of the journey, which is fine with me because the tender back at the end of the day was rocky. Thankfully, this was not our tender.

Actually, it was a full day of rocks and rocking. Once off the tender, we boarded a tour bus for the Cliffs of Moher. Tony--our tour guide--was a teacher and a history major and was well-versed in everything from geology to linguistics to Aran jumpers (we call them sweaters) to pub etiquette. We had a couple hours of driving ahead of us so this was a good thing, making a few stops along the way, one at Dunguaire Castle, which neighbored a bog of sorts. Well, here is the photo, along with a portion of the castle from which they would drop rocks to kill people. I love castles.

The other stops were at the Poulnabrone Portal Tomb and a village store, where most of our group of 47, consisting primarily of students, drank coffee and lined up to use the single bathroom, not necessarily in that order. I had a great conversation with an 82-year-old farmer, whose crops were suffering but whose spirit was not.

Once we reached the Doolin Pier in County Clare, we waited for a boat that would take us beneath the 702-foot Cliffs of Moher. We had a chance to take some photos. Actually, this first photo is from near the Portal Tomb...and believe me, this is probably not the last cow you will see in my blogging.

While we waited for the boat, I decided to re-enact the founding of Ireland. Note the fish-n-chips stand in the back.

The boat for the Cliffs was ironically named Tranquility. Let’s just say that several of the students had not yet gotten their sea legs. On the rocky ride over, quite a few resembled the alleged color of Ireland, green. I say alleged because in reality, as tour guide Tony informed us, the national color of Ireland is blue.