This morning we got up and checked out to head up to Galway. Our first stop was a castle called Bunratty Castle, which we didn't go into, but just stopped to break up the drive. We got a hot drink at a cafe there, which had a nice view overlooking a river, with some cool looking black boats. (Later, we found out these boats are quite common in the area around Galway, and are called Hookers) On the bus, Mark played us a song by an Irish comedy band called the rubberbandits. Apparently it was number 1 in the charts here for about five weeks! It was hilarious, (and rude, don't look it up grandma!!) it was called Horse Outside. Hilarious. From Bunratty, we headed to the Cliffs of Moher for some ridiculously breathtaking scenery. It kind of reminded me a bit of some of the cliffs around the Great Ocean Road, except it was much greener, and the cliffs themselves were more black colours than browns. We had a walk around looking over the cliffs. The atmosphere was made much nicer by the buskers placed along the walk, an accordion player, and a couple of harpists. We climbed up a tower there, which I assume used to be a sentry tower or watch tower of some kind, called O'Briens tower. After a bit (could have probably done with some more time here!), we got back on the bus and went to our next stop, which wasn't really a tourist attraction, but more just a stop on the side of the road. Mark called it the mini cliffs, or the baby cliffs. But they were definitely not mini! Not as big as the cliffs of Moher, but still some impressive cliffs. And there were no railings or anything, so we could climb over the rocks right to the edge of the cliff, where I sat down and dangled my legs over the massive drop onto rocks and crashing waves. It was pretty awesome. Behind these cliffs, was a massive limestone plateau. So as far as the eye could see, it was just flat rocks. It was crazy! It was almost like massive steps up from the cliffs onto these huge flat rocks. Our next stop was an old abbey, called Burren Abbey, which had a super old graveyard out the front. Mark told us that all the locals wanted to be buried there but they weren't allowed.... Cos they weren't dead yet.... Ha ha ha... But it was a pretty cool place, all ruined castle and broken grave stones. One section of the roof had been re-tiled, because of the superstitions of the locals, that when the roof collapsed all the bad spirits came out and gave them and their lands bad luck, so by getting the roof re-done, they were keeping the bad spirits inside. Our next and final stop for the day was Dunguaire castle, which is an old castle, still in operation as a mini museum type thing. They sometimes do traditional medieval dinners there too. There's a skinny path that leads around this castle, which apparently if you walk around anticlockwise you'll get your virginity back, and if you walk around clockwise you'll have 7 years of bad sex! A bunch of the people from the bus all went to get their virginity back... I just went in for a quick look around the gift shop. After this we headed into Galway, where we checked in to our hostel (which is apparently one of the top ten hostels in Europe at the moment). We went for (another) search for music shops and that elusive left handed mandolin. We went into three different shops that didn't have one, and at the last one, the guy there was giving us lots of advice and information, and almost had us convinced that our theory of flipping it over to play like a guitar wouldn't work, until right at the end, after chatting for about half an hour, he gave us an example of something which showed us he had absolutely no idea what we were talking about the whole time!! So annoying! (Although I did have a good play of a baritone ukulele, which sounded pretty awesome...) We met up with the rest of the crew and headed out for dinner at a place called An Pucan, which was pretty good. The food was pretty tasty, but took forever to come out, as there were about 30 of us on the table! There was some Irish music that started up while we were there, which made the atmosphere pretty nice, and Darren ordered ”two hookers and coke" and nobody batted an eye. (Hookers is a type of beer made here in Galway which is a pretty standard drink.) After we'd finished eating Darren and I headed back to the hostel, and got a nice warm shower and went to bed.