The Rainbow Connection

TODAY!
We woke up to a sunny day! It wasn't long after we hit the road that it started raining, and off in the distance we saw a spectacular double rainbow! By the time we were able to pull over and take a picture, it had faded a bit - but when it first appeared it was so brilliant in color! We decided we had never seen anything like it!

We drove about 20 min to the Cliffs of Moher - a place that I visited on my first trip to Ireland. It was extremely windy, even Andrew could barely walk against the wind. These cliffs are much more stark than those at Giants Causeway, but also a high tourist attraction - even today there were several tour buses. The ocean was extremely angry below, reacting to the high winds and storms in the sea the day prior. I decided not to sit out on the cliff's edge like I had on my first trip here. We also saw another rainbow off in the ocean.

We continued our drive along the coast, stopping several times when we saw something of particular beauty. We saw a completely different part of the Burren today, an area much more dense and walked out to where the limestone meets the bay. Looking down the coast you could see large waves crashing high into the rocks.

Around lunch time we walked around Galway city. We stopped at a great Irish pub for lunch, sat by a peat fire and had Guiness and Irish Coffee with our toasted specials (I finally got one Mom!) while the rain poured outside. We did a little shopping - I found a great green irish sweater :) and then headed north into another peninsula known as Connemara where we will spend the next day and a half. On the way to our overnight stop, we stopped at the Cong Abbey ruins - built in 1100. The picture is me in the Monk's Fishing Hut that juts out into the water. The monks would sit inside next to the fire while they waited for salmon to swim into their nets they had in the stream below. Even after all the rain today, the water was still clear straight through to the bottom.

We are spending the night at The Rosleague Manor Hotel in Letterfrack and we're going to have a special dinner here. Definitely not something we could do every night on our journey, but Andrew picked it out as a treat for us. It's a beautiful old manor house that appears to have a spectacular view - I can't wait to see it in the morning!