Cliffs of Moher

August 16th--We planned to leave early this morning, but were held up by me waking up with a migraine. Luckily for me, when I have one, it doesn't take long for it to pass. We were ready and in the car by 10:00. We headed west of Dublin today, all the way to the other side of the country, for the Cliffs of Moher. We drove about 2 hours before trying to find something to eat for lunch. We pulled into the first "big" town we saw on the map, got gas and looked for a restaurant open. We were unsuccessful in this town so we kept driving about 30 more minutes when we saw a Subway sign. We found the Subway and it was open. So, about 12:30, we enjoyed our Subway sandwiches in the town of Loughrea From here, we continued our drive about another 1 1/2 hours. Most of the drive was similar to yesterdays...a little bit of highways and a lot of narrow-ways. We arrived at the Cliffs of Moher around 3:00 and there were definitely a lot of people here to see them. It's probably a really popular site in this area on Sundays because nothing else is open. Anyway, the wind was unbelievable so we bundled up and exited the car. We first walked into the Visitors Center which is built into the cliff. After looking around for a little bit, we ventured out into the wind and up the cliffs. The view was spectacular and scary at the same time. We stayed in the areas that had walling around the edge. The Cliffs of Moher are 214 meters high at the highest point and range from 8 kilometers over the Atlantic Ocean. We did make it up to O'Brien's Tower which stands near the highest point of the Cliffs at 214 meters. After many pictures and getting beat by the wind, we walked back down into the Visitors Center for some hot chocolate. Although the wind was intense, we were so grateful that it wasn't raining. Then, we walked into the few shops that were at the Cliffs before heading back to the car. We were at the Cliffs for about one hour. We got back in the car and made the long drive back to Dublin arriving at our apartment about 8:00. Even though we spent most of today in the car, we can at least say we saw a lot of Ireland and got our money out of renting the car. Also, when we began this trip, Mike was unexperienced at driving a standard. He can now declare "mastery" after spending 2 days on narrow roads, shifting with his left hand and driving on the "wrong" side of the road.