Come to the parties!!!!!

The day started with a breakie cooked by the weary Pat and me getting completely confused as to open a jar of canderel. Why make these things complicated for us simple folk! We drive into Ennis before the city was awake. A quaint village with a high street, covent, friary and riverside walk. After Ennis we drove to the Southernmost point of Clare to Loop head. We padded Kilkee on the way, twinned with Uzbekistan. Imagine a tiny irish village twined with a whole country as big as uzbekistan.

Loop end was a stunning drive in the perfect blue sky, rugged cliffs, birds and stacks. A geographists paradise. The cliffs of Moher was our next stop. We met tourists! We hadn't seen any all day so it came as quite a surprise. We had lunch of soup and a scone (a real sweet scone, not savory) and even though I'm italian by blood, I can't mix scone with soup, it doesn't go. I also tried some Killeny Cheese. The cliffs are stunning but why is it that everybody always walks in the opposite direction to us? There were stupid people standing on the edge of the cliffs in gale force winds but Jo and I soon found the wind tunnels and amused outselfs greatly but playing in them. Hey, we have known each other since toddler group.

After the cliffs we drove to Doolin, home of traditional irish music where we were staying but we still had 2 hours of sun left so we drove on to Galway through the Burren, a karst landscape. We ended up driving around Galway for a good 45 minutes of seeing the Raddison hotel 3 times, the park hotel 3 times before deciding that a big city wasn't for us so we drove on to Spiddel.

Spiddel is in the heart of Gaelic country, no English signs, no English chatting. Jo dashed in to ask the B&B owner if they had any room in the inn, very Mary and Joseph but luckily they had one double left. The B&B owner invited us to a birthday party and then to the party of an Irish writer that had died so off we went to join in on the party. Four doors up was a seafood restaurant, I had spinach cannelloni, the first pub was next door and the 2^nd party was around the corner where we tried out first Guinness of the trip. I thought it was nectar, Jo had a less than appreciative view of Guinness and swiftly ordered a shandy. A enlightening fact in the pub, it was non smoking!