Galway, Conamarra, Drumcliffe, Bundoran
From World Tour 2008 in Bundoran, Ireland on Oct 10 '08
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Wahoo! Today we finallay awoke to a fine day! We were all very happy to not have to deal with rain jackets and umbrellas. After our short touring day yesterday, today would be one of the longer touring days. We headed off at 9am up the west coast of Ireland. Here the hedgerows turned into stone walls, and we could see many and varied paddocks of cows, goats, canadian geese and sheep. I could not believe how green the fields were. There had been a lot of rain in this area as a number of the fields were flooded.
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We stopped at Galway for our morning tea stop, where Mike our tour director walked us to the centre of the old town. Here we had 90mins to walk around and investigate the streets. The first order of business was finding a loo as I was busting. This turned out to be harder than we thought, with even the McDonalds restaurant having key-codes on the toilet entry doors. We eventually stopped at a cafe for coffee and utilised their ammenities. We took our coffee with us, and it being Saturday, walked through the farmers market. Here there was everything from clothes, jewellery, bread, tapas items, fruit and vegetables, seafood and much more. I couldn't resist buying some home-baked buscuits to go with our coffee. We walked down to the river and watched the fast flowing water, and viewed the Spanish Arch and old bonding stores.
They do get sun in Ireland!
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After this stop we continued our drive up through the Cunnamarra region to the village of Cong. Here we ate lunch at Ryan's pub, recommended by our guide. We also had time for a brief walk to the nearby Abbey ruins.
On the road again we travelled up to Drumcliffe, where we had a comfort stop at the tourist centre. At the Church of Ireland church, we walked through the cemetary and looked at the old celtec crosses, seeing one that was over 1000 yrs old. We also took a picture of the grave of William Yeats. We had time for a quick coffee before heading off for our final hour on the bus, to arrive at our stop for the night - Bundoran. This is a resort town, and we were staying at the hotel of hotels - right on the point. We set off on a walk down the path that went around the point, and were afforded 270 degree views of the atlantic and the golden beach and rugged cliffs of coastline. We watched the sunset while walking back to the hotel which was lovely.
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Our evening meal was provided for us, yet another three course menu that had us filled to the brim. We headed into the bar when the restaurant manager shooed us away because they wanted to setup the room for breakfast. About 10 of us stayed for a round of drinks and a chat before calling it a night.
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