Cliffs of Moher and Authentic American Food

If there is anything I can advise about going to Ireland, it is GO TO THE CLIFFS OF MOHER. I don’t care if you’re only in the country for a couple of hours and only have one thing to see, this is it. Our tour included a couple of different cliffs on the way and and incredible restaurant called Fitzpatricks Pub where we ate roast beef and three different types of potatoes (in case you were wondering, this is the way to my heart).At the pub, we were able to meet some of the other people who were traveling on our tour. Some of which included two guys who had met on a trip a couple of years back and decided to explore Europe together after graduating college. Both of them had been traveling for months and didn’t start planning the next trip until they were ready to explore something new. What I admired about these friends was that they had only met for a couple of weeks four years ago and stayed in touch from across the country. They inspired me to want to come back to Europe with the friends I meet here and backpack to new adventures.

How can I describe the cliffs to someone who has never been? The friend that I went on my adventure with put it simply: have you ever had an out of body experience where you realize how BIG the world is? Like how small we are compared to everything around us? Being there was that kind of moment. These mountains had been there for thousands of years and there was nothing manmade about them.We were in the middle of fields with nothing but water and grass ahead.

On our way there our tour guide warned us that 1-2 people die a month at the cliffs from trying to take a picture close to the edge. He joked that it took about 3 seconds to get from the top to the bottom, which was the perfect amount of time to post your last selfie to the world.The whole time we were walking up the cliff, I kept repeating the statistic.Thousands of people come to this site every year to have this out of body experience going to the edge of the cliff to look down at the glory of the views for miles and miles of water and land.

We were extremely lucky that weekend. Before we left that morning, the weather announcements had said that it was going to rain all day.

As we left a rainy Dublin and entered the middle of nowhere Ireland, our tour guide told us that it was the best weather he had seen the entire season. On our way back, we were caught in the rain storm, hungry, and tired.Everywhere we looked had a long wait until we found an “authentic American restaurant”. Only three days out of the US and this is what we had to settle for. I’m pretty sure that out of the entire month that I’ve been abroad, this was the only time that I’ve had American food. But if I can say one positive thing about the experience: it was the best American meal I’ve ever had. I don’t know if it was the hunger or the fact that we’d finally found shelter from the rain after running around Dublin in pouring rain, but we ordered almost everything on the menu. Ribs, mini burgers, pulled pork, wings, mac & cheese, and fries. This was the best way to end our little adventure in Dublin as we made our way to Italy and to the place we would call home for the next few months.