Andy told me I should mention that on our countryside tour yesterday, the bus tour guide told us that the house next to the Cliffs of Moher cost 200,000 euro, and that’s just for a shell, half covered. Today, we started out our day by visiting the Shandon Church to ring the bells. Apparently that’s what visitors do to announce their arrival. They don’t want people to ring nonsensical melodies in excess, so they provide sheet music. The first song we played was Amazing Grace. It sounded really cool. We then toured the rest of the tower, seeing the mechanics behind the four faced liar (supposedly all four sides of the tower have a clock which is slightly different from one another) and behind the bells. When we got to the top, we had a fabulous view of the city of Cork. Andy was a bit scared, but he still seemed to enjoy the view too. On our way back down, we rang the bells again, this time we played Kumbaya. He wanted to play another song after that, The Wedding March, and record a video of us doing it. But we didn’t. We peeked inside the actual service area and it was quaint. Small but nice. We then walked to the other side of the city to see the cathedral called Saint Fin Barre’s. It looks like it is the largest one in Cork. It had amazing stained glass windows and mosaic flooring. Andy kept telling me there’s a church in Milwaukee that looks just as good as this. Afterwards, we stopped for a cup of coffee next to the River Lee. Andy was sad that they didn’t have regular coffee, but I enjoyed the double espresso shots. We walked over tot he English Market to see what the buzz was about. It reminded me of Seattle’s market. We decided to buy some smoked salmon from one of the merchants (cooked, not uncooked). It was delicious. We tried to stop over at a pipe store but unforunately it was closed on Mondays. So we headed over tot he Franciscan Well Brewery to try a couple of beers. Andy had their IPA and I tried the Porterhouse Stout. One of the last things we did in Ireland was to stop and get some doner kebab at Crazy Kebab. I miss doner kebab! Andy loved his first eve doner kebab. We grabbed our packs from the hostel and waited at a bar, The Poor Relation, near the bus station to catch our plane to London.
Going on and on