Blogging Roller

We started off Sunday by driving Sky Road in Clifden, a 7-mile twisty and narrow loop road that runs to the north and west of town with wonderful views of the coast. It's called Sky Road for a reason and I've got a healthy fear-of-heights so I was a little nervous during parts of the drive, but it was worth the time and the nervous tension.



On the road back to Galway the sun came out and it turned into a beautiful sunny day, quite different from the dark drizzly drive we had the day before. Once we reached Galway, it was quite hot. The streets were crowded with Sunday afternoon strollers and shoppers. We walked around the city center long enough to find a nice coffee shop called Mocha Beans with wireless internet (20-minute voucher w/purchase) and check-in with the kids and the folks taking care of the kids via email.



From Galway we headed south, stopping to take the tour at Dungaire Castle along the way. The sunny weather held up and next we made the obligatory stop at the Cliffs of Moher and take the obligatory photo, but decided not to take the extended walk south along the cliffs -- it was starting to get late in the day.



We drove through a series of interesting little towns south of the cliffs. We had to slow down in Miltown Malbay because the streets were filled with street vendors and revelers enjoying pints in the street on a sunday afternoon -- we're not really sure what was going on there, none of the other towns around were so active.



When we finally arrived in Kilkee, the sun was still shining brightly and the beach was still full of sun and sea bathers. After the dark and dreary days in Dublin last week, I wasn't expecting this. We spent the remaining hours of sunlight exploring the town on foot and trying the relatively inexpensive Chinese restaurant on the main street. We stayed at the Halpern Hotel, which was a little disappointing. We were the only guests and the place seemed drab and charmless, especially after our pleasant experience at the Buttermilk Lodge the night before in Clifden.



Photos are on Flickr.

A friendly cat we met last night in the 10:30PM twilight (in Clifden).

Andi arrived yesterday (Friday) and decided to forgo sleep and walk around Dublin while I attended the last day of ApacheCon. I was occupied until 6PM because I didn't want to miss Craig Russell's talk (excellent, BTW), one of the last talks of the day. After that, Andi joined me and some Sun and IBM folks from the Apache Derby dev team (Manyi, Olaf and Sateesh) for a very nice dinner, drinks and conversation ranging from religion and politics to open source dev processess. Making some new friends was a great way to end ApacheCon.

Today, we drove across Ireland from Dublin to Clifden stopping in Athlone for a couple of hours of walking around and taking pictures. After a shaky start and almost getting lost in a maze of roundabouts outside of town, the trip went well. We had sunny weather most of the way and made the trip in about 7 hours total (including our stop in Athlone).

After we passed Galway, we started to hit mist and rain but the scenery was fantastic, if a bit desolate and sheepy. Just as we were about to check into the Buttermilk Lodge the sun came out for a bit, which was encouraging.

So now we're uploading photos and emailing the kids and getting ready to enjoy some music downtown. We'll check in again tomorrow if we can. Next stop is Kilkee.