Notes on Ireland: 2

-the police are called the Gardai (with an accented i: i', I forget the keyboard shortcut for this). Maps show the Gardai station, newspapers say "The Gardai have two suspects in custody..", etc.

-The first day I was in the Doolin area, I walked down to the Cliffs of Moher. My photos for this are pretty easy to find, they're pretty much the first ones in the album. The Cliffs were absolutely beautiful! The Visitors' Center (not Centre here!) was halfway. To the left were the Cliffs, but you could only see them by walking up the steps to the right. Also on the right was O'Brien's Tower, built in 1890 or so to impress female visitors. It was pretty, but closed, so I wasn't able to go inside.

That whole area was very nice, unfortunately the walk was all along roads. The Burren Way going south from Doolin used to go along the coast, and go right to the Cliffs, but it also cut through farmholds. So, the roads.

-Also along the Burren Way, coming down south from the trailhead at Ballyvaughan, was a small tower called the Newtown Castle. The buildings around it hold the College of Art. The Castle can be entered free of charge, and all five or so circular floors have completely open access, as does the roof terrace. Each floor seemed to be a studio for a different student/instructor, I'm not sure which because no one was there when I visited.

-Shannon Airport, coming home: of fifteen gates, eight were devoted to US travel, and had a large US Customs area to go through before the gates. (The international gates all seemed to be served by RyanAir, the budget/no-frills airline that connects European cities.) It was pretty small, but jammed full of people. I would estimate that about 2/3 of them were wearing fatigues. My first thought was "I didn't know the Irish Army was so extensive", then I realised that the camoflage patterns and accents were American. Shannon Airport is a stopping point for the US military, at least the US Air Force and the Marines. Who knew.