Kauffman Commentary

I didn’t get a great picture of our hotel, because we were running for a bus.  It was a very nice and old time tavern type place, where the restaurant took care of rooms and food.

We were running for the bus to make the ferry to the Aran (pronounced Erin) islands.

The weather has been changing and it is rainy and the winds are about 25 mph. This made the waters rough. As I sat on the ferry, trying not to think about how nauseous I was, I thought about the potato famine and the ships that made their way to the U.S. What they must have gone through, sound of babies crying, the smell of vomit, sounds of dry heaves.  Those poor folks in 1845 had to endure this for anywhere from 6 -12 weeks. I’m sure their ship would have been very crude by today’s standards. What’s two hours of this on our little ferry.

There are three islands, we went to the largest called, Inishmore. It is a small town of 1300 folks. The islands are made up of Carboniferous limestone and do not have naturally occurring topsoil. Early settlers augmented the soil with seaweed and sand from the shore. Drystone walls were built to protect the soil. We saw many of these on our bike ride across the island. Most of these rocked pens are small and livestock is moved from area to area constantly, because they are so much smaller than our pastures.

The entire ride we watched the Atlantic crash into the shores.

I don’t think I took pictures of the cattle, but I did get a horse and donkey.

We cycled on a regular bike, no e-bikes for us. We were pretty proud after completing 6 miles, up and down hills.

Then it was back on the ferry for 2 1/2 hours. This time we went to the  Cliff’s of Moher from the water side. Luckily the weather was clear on our return and after turning from the cliffs we had about 25 minutes of rough water and the rest was smooth or at least their idea of smooth.

Our timing worked well today, we got in at 6:15 and as we walked towards the train station we stopped for a slice of pizza. Some people on the street suggested Lil Bros Pizza, it had a really good pizza and hit the spot. Our train left at 7:25 and with the wifi on the train I’m finishing the blog now. We should get to Dublin about 10:00 and return to the NYX Hotel.