Ireland Part 2: Cliffs of Moher, Doolin, Galway

Donna and I flew from Newark with Donna’s siblings, Rich and Barb, on a Wednesday night redeye flight that put us at Shannon airport the next morning. We picked up our rental car and, unable to check into the B&B in Galway until late afternoon, headed northwest to the Cliffs of Moher, a one-hour drive that starts on the M18, a U.S.-style highway with two wide lanes in each direction. It’s a good way to become re-acclimated with driving on the left side of the road from the right side of the car. 

After several roundabouts (much cheaper to build than intersections with flyovers), we turned onto the N85 and were down to one much narrower lane in each direction. We passed through beautiful Lahinch and saw the Lahinch Golf Course preparing for the following week’s Irish Open golf tournament.

Morning clouds burned off and we were presented with a picture-postcard sky as we arrived at the cliffs. The massive, spectacular, 400-foot-tall cliffs abut the Atlantic Ocean and run for about eight miles. They were formed by layers of sediment being deposited when the region was under water millions of years ago, and you can clearly see the layers, like a Tilghman Island cake with bright green frosting on top.

The last time Donna and I were in Ireland, Donna was crestfallen that we missed seeing puffins on Skellig Michael – they had left en masse the day before to begin their migratory journey across the Atlantic to eastern Canada. On this day, we saw some at the cliffs, though through telescopes nature guides had set up for tourists. We would later see thousands more, at extremely close range, back on Skellig Michael.

On the walkways along the cliffs were buskers playing all varieties of musical instruments – guitars, harps, tin whistles – the music quietly overlaying the louder sound of the wild wind. We were too high above the ocean to hear it crashing against the sheer walls below, but crashing it was.

After about an hour of sightseeing, we passed the souvenir stalls and returned to our car, a Skoda Octavia diesel. Skoda, owned by Volkswagen Group, is a Czech product. It suited our needs very well and had an enormous trunk, large enough to squeeze in four large suitcases and more.

From the cliffs we started our drive to Galway but after only a few minutes saw below what looked like a marina and village. On a whim we took a narrow gravel road down and eventually discovered Doolin, a village with pubs, eateries and shops. 

Tour buses and cars were choking the main road – Doolin, we learned, is the launching point for ferries to the Aran Islands and boat tours of the Cliffs of Moher, but we found a place to park and walked around, landing in Gus O’Connor’s for our first pint in Ireland and lunch. The walls were covered in foreign currency (mostly U.S. dollar bills) signed by patrons and police shields (also mostly from the U.S.).  

We drove the remaining hour and a half to Galway, checked into the Inishmore Inn B&B, lugged our luggage up to our third-floor rooms and collapsed for a couple hours of much-needed sleep.

We all awoke somewhat refreshed and very hungry and made the 10-minute walk to Quay Street, Galway’s entertainment district. The street is closed to vehicles and was filled with local and visiting revelers. The locals looked to be of high-school and college age (the University of Ireland’s Galway campus is nearby). Boys were toting six-packs or cases of Stella Artois beer and the girls, many of whom were wearing tight dresses that barely came down to their hoo-has, carried wine bottles. Note: In Dingle, we came across a pub that offered among its cocktails one called the “Galway Hooker.” Apparently, there is a reputation to uphold.

Besides the young partiers and tourists like ourselves, the street was filled with musicians, some solo, others in bands, some playing American/British rock, some performing more traditional Irish tunes. After wandering around Quay Street and the couple others that intersect it, taking in the sights and sounds, we set out to find a place to eat. At most of the places, bands start playing at around 10 pm (“around” is a key term in Ireland, where punctuality is as foreign a term as, say, bump-stocks), so by the time we started looking for dinner, about 9:30, all the best places were packed. We ended up in a hole-in-the-wall joint with perhaps the only surly, sour waitress I have ever encountered in the country. She only served to reinforce by rare exception the normal friendly, cheerful countenance of the Irish.

We left, listened to the remaining street musicians and stuck our heads in a couple other places where there were big crowds, then walked back to our B&B and had a good long sleep.

Next: The Quiet Man bridge, more Galway, the Burren and the Poulnabrone dolmen.