Life on the edge

Wind was the word of the day from start to finish. As early as 8:30 there was a strong wind coming off the ocean and it hadn't lessened by the time we went out for bfast around 11. Two nights ago some US-ians (I feel American is an over-used term) told me that someone had actually been swept into the sea by the wind in the northern-most town in Ireland.

Speaking of fast-paced things, Eden and I listened to jig music at McGann's pub this morning, where we found some hearty bfast. The black stuff is called black pudding. Tastes kind of like sausage. I liked it. 

Took the coastal walk along the cliffs of moher today. The most impressive thing about being above the swelling sea was watching the wind peel the spray off the waves so that it looked like they were going in two directions at once. We embarked on what would become an almost 6-hour hike at high noon and so also got to see a lot of rainbows (or neat refraction action as Eden put it) on the waves. 

Made our way up to the O'brien tower at the topmost point on the cliffs and were witness to a hand fasting ceremony. I thought this was awesome luck until I saw another bride marching over to the same windy spot for her wedding as we were heading back down the cliffs an hour or two later. There were two musicians waiting with their banjos at the first wedding who played after the vows.
We both felt sorry for the bride from the warm comfort of our jackets. Her dress was bare-backed and she must have used a lot of hairspray because our hair looked like bird's nests while every hair on her head was perfectly in place throughout the ceremony. The only practical thing about her attire was the pants she had on underneath (to keep from showing everyone a bit more than they bargained for presumably).
One of the security men was holding a white fur shawl for her to put on the second the ceremony was over so that she didn't have pneumonia during her honeymoon. 

Eden said the cliffs were a good example of something in art called "Atmospheric perspective", which is where the color gets lighter the further away the object is. We hiked passed the main cliff where everyone was taking their picture sitting or lying on the edge, as we will now demonstrate:

We then went past the visitor center which was built into a hill and had two sky lights, but turned around halfway up another cliff lookout because it was too crowded. Windy as it was, the sun was drawing out the tourists like bees to honey. 

Having learned that these are the very same "Cliffs of Insanity" from the Princess Bride, Eden took on the persona of Inigo Montoya on the way down. She also alerted me to the fact that they now make shirts with the rectangular box name tag graphic ("My name is...") that fills in the rest of the quote with the actor's line, "...Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

The hike turned my sneakers into sandals (we think it was around 8 miles) and reduced Eden to moaning all night as we simply stayed in and read our respective books (she recommended some fantasy to me on her kindle and she read something called winter's heart). Not to worry, dear readers, she will survive and I now have an opportunity to buy some actual (although probably not) Irish sneakers. Eden and I take the bus back to Dublin tomorrow so that she can catch her plane home the following morning and I can hop on my bus tour of the north island.

I'll leave you with some snarky words from the wall of McGann's, some cliff cows livin' life on the edge, and yet another example of how incredibly non-intuitive Gaelic is.