Day Three in Ireland

     On my third day in Ireland, I had a field program planned through Semester at Sea. This trip was called “Galway Day: Land and Sea.” I had anticipated a trip to Galway with some stops on the way relating to famous monuments along the way, but what I experienced was much better.

     We left Dublin around 8:30sm. It took us almost two hours to get to our first stop, which was in a very small town called Loughrea.  Loughrea has a population of around 5000 people, where most commute to Galway for their jobs. We went to the natural lake in town. It was beautiful! The lake had mountains behind it.  This lake is a freshwater reservoir for the town. It has a lot of sediment on the bottom, which was drained into it through small tunnels of water underground.  This lake is not a turlough, which is a temporary lake that comes and goes with the seasons. A turlough has large drains around the bottom of it, where the water drains out so that it is empty in the summer. The lake then fills up again during the winter.

      After Loughrea, we went to Gort. We went to what is called The Devil’s Punchbowl. This is a stream that flows above ground, and then goes underground through a sinkhole, and reappears above ground after a while. This is called a resurgence. The water goes underground because rivers are run by gravity, and they always want to flow down. In this case, the rivers flow underground when they flow off of a rock, which flows underground. We followed the stream from where it went underground, to where it reappeared. It was really fascinating!
                                                              
     We then went to Coole Park for lunch. We ate chicken with mushrooms in a pot pie crust, potatoes, and salad. For dessert, we had apple and blackberry pie. After lunch, we explored the park and saw wild horses along a river; it was magnificent! We also saw the autograph tree, where famous people like William Butler Yeats.

                                           
     Next, we drove to the Cliffs of Moher; they were beautiful! The cliffs are approximately 600 feet tall! They were formed by erosion and tectonic plates jutting the cliffs vertical. 
                                              
     We left the cliffs to drive to Galway for dinner. Galway has a very large market for muscles; they even have a muscle festival coming up next weekend. We ate at a local pub. We had steak and mushrooms on ciabatta bread with fried potato wedges, and cheesecake for dessert.