The Cliffs of Moher

Tonight we are at a B&B near the Cliffs of Moher in the town of Doolin. Or I suppose I should call it a village. There are about 25 B&Bs, 5 pubs, a Petrol station, & not a whole let else. I suppose there are some houses here too, but it seems almost everyone has a few extra rooms to let out to the masses of tourists, & why not? There seems to be quite a lot of people who get all crazy about looking over cliffs into the Atlantic. As for me, I'd rather be closer to the water than 100 metres above it. We went to the visitor centre tonight & Chad went off up the hills to take pictures while Asher & I stayed in the gift shop where it was warm & broke things. Asher decided he wanted to see a Christmas tree ornament up close & smashed it on the floor, but the shop lady was really nice & didn't even make me pay for it. Now THAT'S what I call service!


Speaking of customer service, it's been really interesting getting acquainted with the way the UK handles its service sector. For instance, at a grocery store, you can pretty much bet that you'll be bagging your own groceries, there's no one to do it for you, & if you wait for the cashier to do it, you could be waiting a VERY long time, as it's not their job. We were at Heathrow going through security, where you collect all your bits & pieces after they've gone through the x-ray machine & the belt was totally clogged with the grey bins for putting all your small items in. Nothing could go into the x-ray machines anymore, but were the security personnel bothered? Not a bit! It's not their job apparently to remove the grey bins from the belt after people have emptied them, it's the people's responsibility. So Chad nicely removed about 8 bins so that our bags could go through so we could be on our way.

However, it's different when you go to restaurants. We are used to taking our trays & rubbish off the tables when we are finished with them so the next customer can use the table, but in the UK everyone leaves all their dishes on the table for the employees to clean up. Not at McDonald's, as apparently being a N. American restaurant they have adopted the N. American way of doing things where you clear your own table, but you'll be hard pressed to find a rubbish bin at most other places you eat.