June 24 : First Day In Killarney

 The weather has turn against us today. It is cold and rainy. For most of the tour the weather has been partly cloudy and mild. It is like May weather before the long weekend. Unfortunately, tonight there is a “yellow weather alert.”  This means that we can expect winds up to 100 km/h and torrential rains.

Our first stop was at the Cliffs of Moher. These cliffs border Galway Bay and are among the highest cliffs in Ireland. The cliffs unfortunately were shrouded in mist and not entirely visible. I hiked up to O'Brien's Tower, but it didn’t offer any better views.

On this tour, I’ve seen multiple golfs courses from the road. Today we passed the Lahinch Golf Club, found just outside of Lahinch in county Clare. It is rated as the fourth best course in Ireland. It seems that the fairways are about as wide as a road and each hole has as many knolls and dips as most courses have on their entire eighteen holes. My first reaction on seeing a couple of the holes from the road was “Holy Crap.”

I like looking at the different types of houses that each country has when we are on vacation. In the older parts of the cities, that we have visited, they are narrow and colourful. But when we get to the more modern residential areas, they are a boring mix of duplex and bungalows with monochrome stucco walls. What I have noticed though, is that many of these homes have large attached ground level sun rooms that are furnished as sitting rooms. This is an excellent use of space.

As we moved into the southwest, I’ve started to notice that many of the homes have amazing stone walls.  The Breen area has very rocky soil and an endless supply of flat rocks that allow these walls to be built without the use of mortar.

During our bus ride today, we were given a lesson on the Irish potato famine. The Great Famine was a period of mass starvation and disease in Ireland from 1845 to 1849. The most severely affected areas were in the west and south of Ireland.  Many wealthy British landlords, who owned large farms, had crops of oats and grain which they exported to England. Meanwhile, the poor in Ireland could not afford to buy food and were starving. The crop failure resulted in massive high unemployment and rental defaults. About a million people died of starvation and more than a million were evicted from their homes by the British landowners and forced to leave the country.

Our hotel is amazing.  The Dunloe Hotel is easily the classiest hotel we’ve stayed in during this trip. It has wonderful lounges, a bright spacious restaurant and our suite is three times the size of bedroom at home.  The view from our suite overlooks the majestic sight of the McGillycuddy Reeks, the highest mountain range in Ireland.

Tonight, we went to a show called Celtic Steps.  This is the sequel to popular River Dance show.  It was a wonderful blend of beautiful Irish ballads and energetic dance.  We enjoyed it immensely.