The Cliffs of Moher: Day 9
It was time! So we woke up, ate the breakfast that we had purchased at the bistro the night before, showered and piled back into the car to make our way to the Cliffs of Moher. Ennis, while being a fairly standard town with some cute shops and restaurants, doesn't boast too much beyond that, but it does make an excellent location when exploring The Burren and Cliffs of Moher given the proximity. We prioritized the Cliffs over the Burren this time, but we already can't wait to come back and switch it up on our next trip.
So, back to the drive - we hit the road and quickly tossed the location into the built-in GPS, which was at first a mistake, and then a happy accident. We ended up navigating our way to what the GPS thought was the visitor center - this wasn't abundantly clear initially so we kept following sings for "Cliffs of Moher Coastal Walk Car Park" which looked a bit dodgy (see the image below). After a couple of kilometers the road because more and more "Irish" and less and less tourist-friendly. It was like driving into Dingle all over again.
Suddenly we were pulling up to a very small parking lot in front of a family's home where a small Irish boy met us and let us know it was 2 euro to park. After we paid we were able to take the path up beyond their house, through the fields and begin walking the Cliffs. We weren't the only ones who were doing this, so we decided to be followers and give it a whirl. It turned out to be the best thing we ever did. We ended up only paying 2 euro total instead of 6 euro a head at the visitor center, plus we were able to start the walk from the opposite end of the rest of the tourists that were out. This provided an incredibly quiet and picturesque walk for the first 5km. As we got closer to the official visitor center it became much more crowded of course, but we walked up and in anyways - time for a bio break and some snacking.
Souvenirs, snacks and a few exhibits later we were back out of the center and on the trail heading in the direction that we came from. The Cliffs provided such an amazing view in both directions that I won't even try and describe them here, I'll let the photos down below do the talking. The round trip was approximately 10km of walking in total, so needless to say we were exhausted after the walk back and forth, so the car was a welcome relief when we arrived back at the family's home. The nice Irish boy was still there, this time playing soccer with his Mom outside - we thanked them and headed back out in the direction of our AirBnB with 6:30 dinner reservations to make at The Town Hall Bistro in Ennis.
We arrived back in plenty of time to freshen up and head back into town - dinner was great, as usual. After a drink and a heavy meal we both decided it was time to call it a night so we could get a jump on Galway in the morning. Only two more nights/one city to go before it's time to come back to the US!
