Galway, The Burrens and Doolin

We haven’t been sticking to our plans of late and today isn’t different. We left hoping to do a hike near Sligo to Knocknarea and maybe visit Maeves tomb (Neolithic mound) but were unable to locate it. We then moved on to Galway only to learn that the campsite won’t be opening until June. We managed to find a place to park and ventured into town. Galway was nice enough, very modern and sort of dirty. We managed to buy a phone card and call home though. Galway was our original pit stop, but since we were too early for the campsite we moved on to the next stop, The Burrens. The Burrens is a large area of exposed limestone that starts near Carrofin and runs into the sea near Doolin. Our camping guide suggests a drive through the area and during the drive we spotted signs for Ailwee Cave. Julie and I saw this cave advertised online when we tried to do research on Ireland while we were still in Burlington. It looked pretty cool then, so we decided to make a stop. It, unfortunately, wasn’t that great. We have seen much better caves; the one in Belgium comes to mind. Afterwards we left for Doolin, which was originally our planned resting place for tomorrow. The drive was only 281km, which is our longest drive so far in Ireland. Doolin wasn’t on the GPS and it’s not surprising as our camping book says that “Doolin is really known as Fisherstreet”. This small village (pop. 200) is literally one street a few km long with a few pubs and some stores. The only real reason for coming here is to catch a ferry to the Aran Islands. It is also a great base for exploring The Burrens and the Cliffs of Moher. If that weren’t enough it is also said that the pubs have the best music in Ireland. We did attempt to have dinner and a few pints at the local pub but were completely dismayed when we couldn’t find a seat. The pub itself wasn’t small, around the size of the Dickens but every single seat was full. Before we considered standing, Julie looked at a menu and determined that we would find nothing of interest to eat and that everything was around €20. However, it wasn’t a total loss as we did hear some music being played. Four guys sitting around a table playing their instruments.