June 25th, 2001
DAY FOUR: Cork
HOSTEL: Sheila's Budget Accommodation Centre (021 450 5562)

So we woke up after a really nice sleep in Doolin threw ourselves together and had an incredible breakfast at West Winds...I swear for the money, you can't get a better breakfast of pancakes, cereal, fruit, etc. It just kept coming! So while Keri took her shower I went out and took some pictures around town, it was quite amusing how many beer bottles were around from the night before, I heard the lady who owns West Winds' dog got cut from one of the bottles while swimming in the river. So we packed up like usual and headed out down the road to the town's hostel (which we were originally going to stay at) that also served as a bus stop. We wanted to see the Cliffs of Moher so we had to take the seven-hour "scenic" bus trip to get to Cork. Yes, seven hours, that means it was longer than the actual plane trip to get to Dublin! The good part of it was we got to see the amazing Cliffs of Moher...I couldn't begin to tell you how astonishing they were (despite how touristy) to see these huge 700+ foot cliffs right in front of you, also the fact that there weren't any huge obstructing fences or anything. While we were there we heard the story about how a French lady stepped a little too close to the edge and fell off about a week before. Despite this, we couldn't help but be dumb Americans and take a picture by the edge. Unfortunately though, our time there wasn't that long because we had to catch our bus again. The bus trip seemed to go on and on as we took the route to Cork. The one real highlight of the trip though was we crossed the river Shannon on a big boat the held cars and our bus...it was quite exciting! For some reason long trips of sitting limp on a bus doesn't settle well for either of us and we were both quite sick by this point. Eventually as the sun was setting we got into Cork, which is more of a college city with a big river running through it. Keri and I were so hungry we could barely move, but somehow we found a crummy pizza restaurant (but we were both hungry enough to make it good) and found our hostel up on the top of the hill...mind you, it was a big freekin hill and we had huge 30-40 pound backpacks on our back. Sheila's of Cork was our hostel for two nights, as we needed to do some relaxing on the trip and stay in one place for the first time. We were both pretty tired, so we hung around the hostel for the remainder of the night and took it easy.

(Click on a picture to enlarge and see captions)