Ireland Day 7 Ennis to Galway

We left Ennis around 9am and headed in the direction of The Burren by way of Corofin and Kilnaboy before stopping in Kilfinora, to see a documentary about The Burren, and have a little look around the town. Kilfinora has the smallest Cathedral in Ireland and is well-known for its celtic crosses:
  
After this, it was off past Lemaneagh Castle:
Next stop was the Poulnabrone Portal tomb. There were similar ones along the side of the road, but not in as good repair as this one. It’s in the middle of The Burren, which is basically a lot of limestone on top of which little soil is left:
 
The road between the tomb and Ballyvaughan:

Next stop was for lunch, in Ballyvaughan. It was a nice lunch with a sea view again:

Then it was onwards in the direction of Bellharbour with its Martello Tower, and past the Cistercian Monastery by Galway Bay on the road to Kinvarra:

Kinvarra was a pretty fishing village, close by Dungaire Castle:
 
Next was a whirlwind tour of Galway on the way to the Celtic Crystal showroom.
 
That was a bit of a weird one. The owner of the factory/shop, an elderly lady, who apparently won the business-woman of the year award at some stage, expounded the virtues of the crystal being cut in her factory quite vehemently. It was like listening to a very strict english teacher rattling off the rules and regs before going out to play. She had a young man show us how the glass is cut etc, which was quite interesting.
After this we went back to the hotel and had some free time. A few of the others went into town for some sight-seeing but I thought I better get back to the room and work on my blog and photos since it was raining, and we were supposed to have several hours spare time the next day.
Dinner was quite good, and at 8.15pm we met the bus with a wild pensioner who turned out to be our driver. We were taken to another hotel for a performance of Trad on the Prom (link because we were not allowed to take photos). This was a show of “Irish Music, Song & Dance at its Best”. It really was very good, with the performers each being award winning and some having performed with Riverdance, Lord of the Dance, The Chieftains etc. It wasn’t as much ‘fun’ as the show at the Merry Ploughboy, but probably technically better. It was most enjoyable in any case.
Our mad skinny-dip raving driver picked us up and took us back to the hotel by about 11:30pm, ready for me to do some more work til 1am before falling into bed.