No smoking in bars, and soon no drinking and no talking.

Yesterday (and this morning-- so weird) we were in Galway. We decided to splurge on a tour and went around to see the Burren, Ailwee Caves, and the Cliffs of Moher. And some city that has a huge singles festival that they kept telling us about. It's not anywhere near now. I didn't really get it.



The Burren has lots and lots of strange cow-sheep-goat hybrid looking creatures (actually fluffy cows- but we did a bunch of double takes), sheep, BABY SHEEP, and alpacas. At one point the guide stopped the bus to let us take pictures of the sheep, mentioning that they occasionally got curious and would wander down the hill toward us. The whole herd comes SPRINTING over the hill and starts milling about in front of us, showing off their fannies. The tour guide was cracking up, and we felt terribly special.

The landscape was really gorgeous-- ancient rock walls, somewhat less ancient stone castles and churches, low rolling green hills and what certainly look like moors to me. I really need to read Wuthering Heights, speaking of. Christine made fun of me for it! Get her, Grandma. It's really spare, low on trees, rocks everywhere-- just begging to be made into a watercolor (we aren't actually that ambitious).

The Aillwee Caves were awesome. They're limestone, and it's a living cave-- new formations being created as the water drips down from above. Apparently the whole thing used to be filled with water, which kind of blew our minds. They are lit sparely, so as not to damage the cave, which made for some striking pictures. At one point our nice guide turned off all the lights on us and said she was going to leave us there. She says after a certain amount of time in pitch black you start hallucinating. Not very hospitable.



We stopped in Doolin for lunch-- which we had been encouraged to visit by another hostel kid. There was next to nothing there, so again- a bit confused. But we had delicious vegetable soup and some thick brown bread with tangy berry jam on it and we both just about died of food happiness.

Speaking of vegetarian food- we met a French girl and two Italian guys at the hostel, and after much needling, shared their pizza and eventually went out to a pub. Christine explained that she was a vegetarian and couldn't eat the pepperoni pizza because she supports animal rights. At the phrase "animal rights," one of the boys nearly spit out his food laughing. Christine whimpered something about cute baby animals as he tried to collect himself to no avail. Lots of hand quoting of "animal rights" and "freedom fries" ensued. Later at the pub we saw that there was next to no one inside, as everyone was outside in the 40 degree weather so they could smoke. Explaining California smoking laws stunned them into silence. As did our tuition costs.

Today we walked around Galway for a tiny bit (failing to find cheese which I was a bit miffed about), and got into Dublin. We went out for stupid Lebanese food (gross hummus for Christine and some unidentifiable sauce and RANCH on my sandwich) which left us in a bad mood, and so we went and found a brownie in a bar that played awesome homey songs. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDKFn9gwNC8&feature=related)