Cliffs And Castles

Reblogged August 12 from Rebekah Lyn’s Kitchen

Filed under: friends,history,travel — itsrebekahlyn @ 8:15 AM 
Tags: Bucket List, Bunratty Castle, Cliffs of Moher, history, Hospitality, Laundry, Misadventures, Wild Atlantic Way

The drive from Kylemore to the town of Barna, just outside Galway City, took about an hour and we arrived at Furrymelia Cottage around 6:00 pm. Pauline, the B&B hostess, was waiting to greet us and hurried to put the kettle on. When she heard we hadn’t eaten dinner she even fixed us some sandwiches and pulled out some cookies to go with our tea.

The kitchen had a cozy seating area with a wood-burning stove for heat. We sat in here getting to know Pauline and found out she had been down in Killarney the previous day and had raced home that morning to make sure she was there for our arrival. Her husband had remained in Killarney for a work project so it ended up being just the three of us in the house for the whole stay.

When we decided to retire for the night, Pauline fixed us hot water bottles. What a wonderful touch! I drifted off with the warmth of that bottle easing the tightness in my lower back from so much walking.

Monday morning we arose and found a continental breakfast laid out for us. Pauline gets up early to go swimming before work but made sure we had a nice selection of options to start the day. There was fruit, yogurt, a couple different jams, bread, cereal, and of course a selection of teas. There was also a small plate with what looked like cubes of cheese. 

I had started the keto diet a couple of months before leaving on this trip and tried to keep close to it during the travels so I was excited to see the cheese. I put several cubes on my plate. When I ate the first one it didn’t taste like any cheese I’d had before and slowly it dawned on me that it was butter! Knowing we were going to have a long day I shrugged and ate the rest of my cubes thinking about the wonderful fat content they were providing. Plus, it was some of the best butter I’ve ever tasted.

The skies were cloudy again and I kept hoping it would clear up as we were headed to the Cliffs of Moher. We took the more scenic Wild Atlantic Way rather than the motorway. It provided some excellent views but boy was the road rough. I would like to drive the whole Wild Atlantic Way, though. It meanders through small villages and along beautiful coastline that could take an entire month to explore.

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We arrived at the Cliffs of Moher and while the sun was shining, there was still a gray haze in the air that made getting good pictures difficult. I’ve seen such vibrant pictures that I felt let down not being able to experience that vibrancy myself. There are pathways along the cliffs outside the official boundaries of the park, but they don’t have any safety features and people get blown off them by the whipping winds every year. We did venture out a few feet and Tricia wanted a picture near the edge, but I wasn’t about to risk going over the side. There was another pair of women out there. I offered to take their picture together but there was one sensible like me who didn’t want to risk it either.

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From the Cliffs we headed back south to Bunratty Castle. We arrived in time for lunch and stopped in a pub called the Creamery Bar.

This was one of the disappointments for me. The service was terrible and the food was just meh. Later we found out we could have gone across the street to Durty Nelly‘s, one of the oldest pubs in Ireland. 

Bunratty has been around since the 15th century and is starkly medieval. I don’t know how mothers navigated the narrow stairways carrying children. They are quite treacherous, especially when going down.

It was interesting to see how spartan and rustic some rooms were, but one, the private family dining room was almost elegant.

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There is also a “village” set up around the castle, with more than 30 buildings representing village life. We didn’t have enough time to fully explore this area or partake in the medieval banquet that was being served that night, but I would recommend it if you are planning to visit the area. 

After exploring Bunratty we visited the shops across the street. I finally found a sweater that I really loved, but this shop wanted me to spend 250 euros to get the free shipping and I couldn’t find enough other stuff to make that work so I put the sweater back and only purchased some linen items.

On the way back to the cottage we stopped at a Revolution Laundry. We’ve been traveling for a week now and were getting low on clothes. Like the stores, laundry mats all seem to close early in Ireland too. Revolution Laundries, though, are located in the parking lots of gas stations and consist of two washers and two dryers.

It was raining once again when we dragged our clothes out of the car and dumped them into the washer. Fortunately there is a small overhang that protects the machines from the weather. It took about 45 minutes for the clothes to wash, but when I went to put them in the dryer I noticed they were really wet, like the washer hadn’t run a spin cycle. My fingers were nearly frozen when I finished getting them all moved.

We waited 30 minutes on the dryer only to find the clothes were still soaking wet, as in we could wring water out of them. Tricia came out of the car to help me wring them out and again fingers were like ice when we started the machine for another 45 minutes.

I should mention we hadn’t eaten since lunch, probably six or seven hours earlier. Well, we had some candy from the convenience store but nerves were raw and this wasn’t the best experience. After that second run through the dryer the clothes were still very wet. They weren’t even warm so I don’t know what that dryer was doing. We were frustrated and tired so I suggested we just put them back in the laundry bag and figure something out at the cottage. I knew there was a clothesline out back so I figured we could just hang them out the next day. 

While we were putting them in the bag, they were so heavy with water that the bag started to rip in half! We managed to get them all in and get the bag into the car without it completely tearing.

We must have looked like we were moving a body when we returned to the cottage well after dark. Pauline was already in bed so we quietly went about hanging the clothes around the bathroom to air dry as much as possible overnight. The heated towel rack proved an excellent place for socks and underwear to dry. Once we had covered every surface that could possibly allow the clothes to dry we fell into bed cold and exhausted. I really missed the hot water bottle that night. 

I don’t know what it is about doing laundry while traveling, but I had a hard time with it years ago when another friend and I were in Paris. We’d been traveling for about a week then, too, and since we were staying at Disneyland Paris we figured that would be a good place to wash clothes. I had no idea a washing machine could be so very different overseas and all the instructions were in French. This was another late night and we were laughing so hard from pure exhaustion and the comedy of how something so simple could become so hard. We worried for a minute that we might disturb anyone who had a room nearby, but since no one came out to complain we just kept laughing. Sometimes that is the only way to deal with difficult situations.

Come back next week to find out if the clothes ever dried out.

Have you ever had a laundry fiasco while on the road? Please share it in the comments, otherwise I might have to believe I’m the only one with this challenge.