Days 20 & 21: July
6 & 7, 2012
Friday
we woke up and had breakfast at the Doolin Activity Lodge. Instead of going
with the traditional Irish Breakfast, I decided to try something more familiar,
pancakes and bacon. But oh did I choose wrong my friends. The pancakes,
rubbery, and the bacon here is not bacon like we are used to. It’s not bad, but
it more closely resembles thicker slices of ham here. After chewing my pancakes
enough to swallow and dipping my “bacon” in the remaining drops of syrup left
we were off to the pier.
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| Part of our welcoming committee. |
We
were headed to Inis Oirr (spelled and pronounced Inishere) the closest of the Aran
Islands to the coast of Doolin. Our ride, the Happy Hooker, took us to the back
corner of the island in about thirty minutes. Immediately we were greeted by
one of the many dogs that roam the island. They were all owned by people on the
island, but had no boundaries of where they could not go. I wanted to take them
all home with me. (I have seen more dogs off leashes just roaming around or
walking next to their owners in Ireland than ever before. It’s actually pretty
awesome how well behaved they all are!) Time to start day two adventure of
‘splorin Ireland.
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| Our rides around the island! |
After
we passed the welcoming committee of a couple dogs and a couple cows, we all
rented bikes and had to pull from our past and try to remember how to ride
them. Luckily the stories are true, we picked it right back up like we had been
riding every day of our lives. Our first stop, to see the seals, or at least
where the map said there would be seals… We unfortunately saw no seals. It
might have to do with the fact that we were in the wrong place, but no bother,
we found a nice place to stop and run around on the rocky shore. The constant
battering of the Atlantic ocean on these barren treeless islands have made a
landscape full of rocks, it’s a very unique place. On our bumpy bike ride along
the broken up rock paths we saw miles and miles of stone walls. I guess when
you live on such an empty, rocky island what else is there to do besides break
up the rocks and build fences right? They were everywhere. And 99.999% of them
were empty. We saw a couple that had cows, donkeys, or sheep in them but other
than that they seemed pretty pointless.
We
split up for lunch like usual(it’s too difficult for small pubs to deal with
twenty of us so we just save ourselves the misery of our servers hating us and
go our separate ways). We went to this small pub where I got a Cajun chicken
bap. If you’re like me and don’t know what the heck a bap is then I’ll tell
you, it’s a type of bread roll. A very good one at that. After lunch we grouped
back up and headed to a shipwreck on the other side of the island. This place
had tetanus written all over. It was just straight rust. So as my
cautious/injury prone side outweighed my adventurous side yet again I watched
the ‘splorin from a slight distance. I also was trying to avoid the stank that
was lingering around this giant pile of rust so I just checked it out from a
distance mostly.
Before
we had to catch the ferry back we caught a little show
from a group of buskers
who were visiting the island for the day. They were the best Irish music we had
seen since being here. They added a modern, quirky twist to traditional Irish
sounds. Once we got back to Doolin we head out for dinner and then to the pub
for some more music.
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| At the Cliffs of Moher! |
The next morning we headed to the
Cliffs of Moher on our way to Galway. There is not much to add here besides the
fact that it was breath taking. The views as well as the gusts of winds we had
to fight to climb up the stairs to the top of the cliffs. After the cliffs we
headed north along the coast to Galway where we arrived around 4:00.
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