Looks like more Irish sunshine today.

It’s another lovely day in Ireland as we head out in our coach to see the sights.

Look! There’s a sight now!

Corcomroe Abbey is an early 13th-century Cistercian monastery located in the north of the Burren region of County Clare, Ireland, a few miles east of the village of Ballyvaughan in the Barony of Burren. It was once known as "St. Mary of the Fertile Rock", a reference to the Burren's fertile soil.

At least it has stopped raining.

The cows seem not to care one way or the other.

Anyway, the landscape is gorgeous.

Pretty over this way.

Pretty over that way.

And pretty rocky, if you ask me.

We are driving into an area called the Burren.

The Burren (from the Irish word Boireann, meaning "great rock") is a unique karst limestone region covering roughly 250 to 560 square kilometers in northwestern County Clare, Ireland. It features vast cracked limestone pavements, rare arctic-alpine and Mediterranean plants, and rich ancient archaeological monuments

We stopped along the way and picked up a local guide, a farmer who has lived here all his life. He is an outstanding naturalist.

Shane Connolly is a native of the Burren. He has a diploma in Archaeology from the National University of Ireland, Galway and a diploma in Local and Regional Studies from University College Cork.

Shane is also qualified with a certificate in Agribusiness and followed that on to complete a degree in Business Studies and he is a cattle and sheep farmer at Corkscrew Hill, Ballyvaughan.

An experienced guide and walking leader in the Burren, Shane enjoys good conversation and a laugh. His interests include place names, stone wall construction and folklore

He pointed out every single little flowering plant and thistle.

And he was fascinating.

He gave a very interesting lecture about the layers of the land here. It was all carved by glaciers during the Ice Age. Way down deep there is granite and above that sandstone, and above that the limestone rocks you see and above that, shale. Not much sale around here. He says that in winter they bring cattle up here to graze among the limestone rocks because lowland meadows become too muddy.

He also explained the difficulty of building rock walls to keep flocks of sheep and herds of cattle separated. It turns out stacking the rocks to make fences is easy compared to finding and breaking the rocks to make the raw material.

There is plenty of raw material here.

You learn something new every day. Or, as Brendan likes to say, "Every day is a school day."

Well, look at that! Another old building!

Leamaneh Castle is a ruined castle located in the townland of Leamaneh North, parish of Kilnaboy, between the villages of Corofin and Kilfenora at the border of the region known as the Burren in County Clare, Ireland. It consists of a 15th-century tower house and a 17th-century mansion.

Lunchtime!

Irish stew! Beef, gravy, vegetables, and a lump of mashed potatoes.

I never pass up an opportunity to take a picture of an unusual toilet.

Across the street from the restaurant was an old cemetery with an Irish cross. And that building to the left in the background? I have no idea. But I've been told if there's a cemetery there's bound to be a church nearby.

Let's hit the road again.

Now we have arrived at the Cliffs of Moher.

The Cliffs of Moher are sea cliffs located at the southwestern edge of the Burren region in County Clare, Ireland. They run for about 14 kilometers (9 miles). At their southern end, they rise 120 meters (390 ft) above the Atlantic Ocean at Hag's Head, and, 8 kilometers (5 miles) to the north, they reach their maximum height of 214 meters (702 ft) just north of O'Brien's Tower, a round stone tower near the midpoint of the cliffs, built in 1835 by Sir Cornelius O'Brien, then continue at lower heights.

From the cliffs, and from atop the tower, visitors can see the Aran Islands in Galway Bay, the Maumturks and Twelve Pins mountain ranges to the north in County Galway, and Loop Head to the south. The cliffs rank among the most visited tourist sites in Ireland, with around 1.5 million visits per year.

I think all of them are here today.

More up here.

There seemed to be music everywhere the tourists go in Ireland. I liked it.

There they are. The Cliffs of Moher.

This is pretty interesting.

I'm impressed.

So are lots of other people.

Here there be cliffs.

And ice cream! Here they have ice cream! This is the perfect tourist destination.

Time to head back to the bus.

Bye bye sheep.

Bye bye, Cliffs of Mohr.

The gray clouds seem to go on forever.

It's a scenic bridge with a scenic old bridge nearby!!

And there's a stream.

With a scenic town on its banks.

And scenic ruins.

Our driver is a miracle worker. These roads through the little towns in the southern Ireland were never designed for giant tourist buses. But we have been making it through every day without a single scratch.

The upside of all the rain is that Ireland is truly green.

Which the cows genuinely appreciate.

I have been to Limerick. Want to hear me recite one?

Here is our hotel for the next two nights.

And here we are at dinner.

I have a great seat in the dining room. I can look out onto the roundabout in the center of town. We are in Killarney, “a thriving town nestled into the beautiful McGillicuddy Rocks mountain range.” Wasn’t McGillicuddy Lucy Ricardo‘s maiden name?

I'm enjoying this.

Everybody was enjoying dinner.

Just at the right time, 7:07 PM, I stood up here in the dining room and told everybody to come to the window and look because we were having an eclipse of the sun.

I could see the eclipse beautifully through this window. It was almost total, about 96% in Ireland, according to the Internet. But even though my eyes were seeing an almost total eclipse, this was the best my iPhone camera could do through the window.

Fortunately, Lesley went outside to take a picture. This isn’t exactly what it looked like, but her camera did a much better job than mine did. The real thing looked like a sparkling crescent: not a full ring like we saw during the previous eclipse in Arkansas, but pretty close.

Oh boy! For dinner we had a piece of chicken with brown gravy on a lump of mashed potatoes.

This is the view from my bedroom window. I think I will close the curtains and get some sleep.

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