Today kinda sucked. The weather was the worst we had encountered to date. It was raining, cold, and a low-level fog was pretty much everywhere. The image above is a joke photo I took when we went to the Sliabh Liag, pronounced “Slieve League”, which is a wall of cliffs that are the second-highest sea cliffs in Ireland, and some of the highest sea cliffs in Europe. Supposedly, they are more impressive than the Cliffs of Moher, which we visited on our first trip to Ireland.

We had originally scheduled a boat trip around the base of the cliffs, but because the weather had turned and the sea had gotten choppy, we were notified yesterday that the cruise had been cancelled. All’s well that ends well because in between windows where we could see the sea from the walking path around the clifftops, we could see that the water was, in fact, hella choppy.

We went to the cliffs anyway, and took the shuttle to the start of the walking path but only stuck around for 30 minutes or so until the bus came back around to collect us. We couldn’t see the cliff-tops from where we were, so while I’m sure they’re impressive, we simply couldn’t see.

I kind of pushed myself into a narrative corner there, but before we went to the cliffs we had to deal with a parking situation. Parking in Donegal Town is next to impossible; most parking is on the street which naturally limits the number of spaces available, and there are a few parking lots around but they fill up fast. All of them are pay to park, too, between 9AM and 6PM. We ended up parking a good five to seven minutes away from our hotel when we originally arrived so we had to go to the car this morning, where we found that we had earned ourself a ticket. Apparently, I had mis-entered the car’s registration/license plate number on the payment website, so it looked like we were illegally parked. I had the receipt for the payment so I logged into the site to dispute the charge, but it’ll take up to four weeks to get a judgement. I might just pay the €40 and be done with it.

We moved the car for a bit after I corrected the registration on line and paid for another day of parking (successfully, this time) but we decided to go to a local artisan’s market about 45 minutes away. It was super small, maybe only five different shops and most of them were making and selling art: paintings, some glass items, and pottery. The first shop we went into was a very tiny jewlery store, where I got this:

“Wait, Chris!” you might be saying. “Didn’t you just get a new ring the previous day?” The answer to that is “yes. Yes I did” but I became concerned that the original ring might get tarnished; the pattern on the ring was embossed, not engraved, so if the ring does tarnish the entire pattern might fade. This ring is hand-made, Stirling silver, and the pattern is carved into the ring itself. I like this one much better, so this has been officially dubbed my “new wedding band”.

We returned to Donegal Town because while the boat tour of the Slieve League cliffs had been called off, Donegal Town still offered a “water bus” tour of Donegal and the nearby islands. We wanted to make the 11AM time-slot but were told that there wouldn’t be an 11AM time-slot because aside from the two of us, only three other people had expressed interest. However, we put our name in for the 3:30PM time slot which had already registered enough people to ensure that the trip would happen.

However, I was extremely tired after having not slept well that night, and Isabelle wasn’t 100% sold on the bay excursion after the disappointing trip to the cliffs, so we blew it off. Instead, we went home and watched game shows…Britain loves game shows, and the TVs we’ve had access to all carry TV channels like BBC and Virgin.

Our dinner this evening was at The Harbour Restaurant & Bar which is just a hop, skip, and a jump (or European equivalent) from our hotel. I finally got around to having fish & chips, and Isabelle had her mussels. She didn’t get a bucket this time like she did when we were in-country last time, but it was still enough that the staff gave her an extra bowl to put the shells into…and she still managed to expand her empties to my plate.