Rob and I spent 7 days in Ireland (April 22 - April 29), and also saw Krakow, Poland on the way back. We loved Ireland, and you will see whey when you look at the pictures below. To our surprise, we did not get rain while in Ireland. It was mostly sunny with some cloudy days. I even got sunburned! We used buses to get around Ireland, as they have a good bus system. We also rented bikes for two days of exploring the Dingle Peninsula.
Day 1: We flew from a city in Poland into Cork, Ireland on April 22nd. We got into Cork in the evening and explored the city in the dark. It is a pretty city in the south of Ireland with about 100,000 people.
Day 2: We went to the 15th century Blarney Castle, located outside of Cork. The castle is well preserved, and we climbed to the top of it. There is a tradition that if you kiss Blarney stone at the top of the castle, you will have a gift of eloquence. See a picture of Rob kissing the stone in the slides below. The castle has beautiful parks around it, and we spent hours enjoying the sunshine, green grass and blooming flowers and trees. When we got back to Cork, we attended an evening Easter service.
Day 3: We took an early morning bus from Cork to Liscannor, a small seaside village located close to the Cliffs of Moher. We wanted to hike the Cliffs of Moher, which are the tallest cliffs in Ireland. We got into Liscannor in late afternoon and walked around town to find a place to stay. Because April is not a very touristy season in Ireland, we did not book housing in advance, except for a hotel in Cork. We found a great bed and breakfast in Liscannor. Once we left our backpacks at the B&B, we went to hike the seaside for several hours.
Day 4: We headed to the Cliffs of Moher in the morning. It took us about 3 hours to hike to the cliffs, as we had to walk to the hill that leads to the cliffs and climb it. We approached the cliffs from the southern point, which is called Hag’s head. This area has a signal tower built in 1806 during Napoleonic Wars to watch for the coast for any sign of the French. The Cliffs of Moher rise from the Atlantic Ocean to a height of 702 feet and extend for a distance of 5 miles from Hag's Head to the northern part of the cliffs, where the visitors’ center is. We had a great time hiking the cliffs; we saw fields of green grass and dandelions at the top of the cliffs. We walked on the path past the cliff to get to a small town (one street only), Doolin, for the night. We walked 14 miles that day!!! Tired but happy we arrived in Doolin around 5 p.m. We found a place to stay and headed to the only pub in town that had great food and live music (see video below).
