UK & Ireland, Day 10: From the Cliffs of Moher to the Walled City

Friday, 6/3/16

I don't think any of our Ireland hotels included breakfast. After getting all turned around trying to find somewhere to stop for breakfast, we ended up going to another Tesco for a couple of pastries.

We made our way over to the Cliffs of Moher, Ireland's most visited natural attraction. These cliffs stand 702 feet and stretch for 5 miles along the Atlantic coast of County Clare in the west of Ireland.

This is a very scenic area, and I was checking out all the seabirds, and omg, we found puffins! You just don't even know how excited I was.

Don't they have the most beautiful beaks?

It was a really beautiful area.

We grabbed some food from the Puffins Nest Cafe to tide us over.

We still had a 4+ hour drive to Londonderry. Along the way, we stopped at Poulnabrone dolmen, a portal tomb dating back to the Neolithic period. A dolmen is a type of stone monument made of two or more upright stones with a single stone lying across them, and this is one of the best-known of all Irish dolmens.  An excavation in 1985 revealed that there were the remains of over two dozen humans buried under the stones.  It is situated on the karstic limestone pavement of the Burren, which was a really interesting landscape.

At some point, we crossed into Northern Ireland, but we never got an official welcome sign, so I was a bit disappointed. Somewhere along the way we stopped for some overly sweet ice cream and some more Supermac's Garlic and Cheese Fries.

We stopped at the Walls of Londonderry to see the only remaining completely walled city in Ireland, which is one of the finest examples of Walled Cities in Europe. They were originally built during 1613-1618 as defenses for settlers from England and Scotland.

We were staying at the Best Western White Horse Hotel, and our room was fairly spacious and overall nice. The bathroom seemed nicely updated.

We ate downstairs at the 68 Clooney Restaurant. It seemed like a nice restaurant, possibly a wee bit fancier than we were thinking. We shared the Grilled Halloumi and the Trio of Goats Cheese.