Ireland Day 11: Getting to Inishmore

Tuesday morning we had our final breakfast with wonderful John the B&B host. We had a fairly long drive ahead of us to get to the location of our next adventure, and so we left early to allow for LOTS of extra driving time. The plan was to stop and see the Cliffs of Mohrer on the way to Doolin, where we would catch a ferry to the Aran Islands.

Despite leaving more than an hour earlier than google maps said I needed to, we *barely* had time to see the Cliffs. Part of the route included taking a car ferry, which I guess took a little longer than expected. But the main problem were those crazy tiny curvy roads, as always. We in fact probably shouldn't have stopped at the Cliffs at all--as it was, we had to run (literally) from the parking lot to the viewing area, shoot a few pictures, and then run back to the car. I hate doing site-seeing like that, like I was just checking things off a list or something, but alas we had no choice as we were REALLY out of time. The Cliffs of Mohrer are indeed spectacular, but they are also very crowded with tourists, and they charged us like 12 euros or something to park. In retrospect, maybe we should have just skipped it.

Anyways, we did pull into the harbor at Doolin just in the nick of time to pick up our ferry tickets and dash over to the dock. The tide was too low for the ferry to come all the way to the dock, so they shuttled us over in little speeder boats. The ferry was bigger, but still not what I was imagining a "ferry" to be like. There wasn't a lot of seating, and we were sitting outside. Oh well, though--the sun was fairly bright that day, but we did have a good view of the ocean and coastline.

Okay, some background information is needed here about the Aran Islands. There are three large islands of the coast of Ireland in the west (much bigger than the Skelligs). They are very rocky, but pretty much flat for the most part (at least compared to the Skelligs anyway). People have lived on them in larger numbers since the 17th century (apparently many fled here during the persecution of Oliver Cromwell). The people layered sand and seaweed on top of the rocky ground to create soil for farming potatoes. The islands have historically been very, very poor and people struggled to survive on the rocky earth. Their relative isolation preserved a lot of culture, however, and they are still strongholds of native Irish traditional life and language. In fact, the Islands are what is known as a Gaeltacht area--which are certain regions of Ireland where Gaelic is the official language. Road signs and so forth are in Gaelic, and the residents all speak Gaelic on a day-to-day basis (although they speak English too.)

There are three different islands that are collectively called the Aran islands. I've included a map so that you can see what I'm talking about. We left from thebit of mainland on the right of the map pictured above (not from Galway, which is at the top of the map). From right to left (heading away from mainland Ireland), there is Inisheer (the smallest of the three), then Inishmaan, then Inishmore (the furthest away and biggest). [By the way, there are lots of different spellings of these names--I think the map spells them differently, but I've written the more phonetic spellings.] Inishmore is where most of the tourists go, as it is much bigger and more built up (not that it is very built up though!) and has more ruins and such to see. That is where we were headed. I had already booked our bed and breakfast for the night in advance, since I read that it was a popular place. The plan was to rent some bicycles and tour around the island for the day, then spend the night at our B&B, going to see Dun Aengus the following morning (more on that later).

Okay, so back to the ferry. When we picked up our ticket, the lady at the desk explained that the boat would make a stop at Inisheer on the way out, where we'd have a one hour "layover." Then we'd board a second ferry and go straight to Inishmore. This was fine with us--it'd give us a chance to get some lunch on Inisheer and we could see a bit of that little island too. So we happily rode the boat out there and had a nice lunch in a pub, followed by some yummy ice cream at a little shop. (Inisheer was VERY small, by the way. It is the second most often-visited, so there are lots of people trying to sell you horse and carriage rides and stuff, but there are no cars to be seen, and the dock was VERY small and basic.) Then, we got back on a ferry at the appointed time (did I tell you they named their ferry the "Happy Hooker"?) and were on our way to Inishmore. I was happy and excited, and Kevin and I were amazed at how very very black the ocean looked. So dark and mysterious.

There were only about three or four other people on the ferry with us at this point, and they had gone down below while we stayed up top. When we'd boarded the guy asked us where we were going. I said "Inishmore" and showed him my ticket, and he'd waved us on. (Why are you telling me this, you ask? Just wait. It becomes important.) We sort of started zoning out for a while as more and more ocean went by. We started to slow down as we approached another island. I thought it was strange that I hadn't really noticed the second island and we were already stopping at the third, but I figured I must have just been too zoned out and missed it. We pulled up to some docks, which were MUCH bigger and very new looking. There were no signs on the docks, and no one made any announcement about where we were, but since we were supposed to be going straight to Inishmore after Inisheer, Kevin and I hopped off, as the ferry employees watched, not making a peep. (Do you see where this is going?)

We started walking away from the pier. As we got to the road, it was strangely quiet and empty. I expected there to be at least as many people trying to sell us pony and trap rides or rent us bicycles as on Inisheer--if not many more. But there was nobody. We kept walking. It just got even emptier. The only houses we could see were a pretty far ways off. Then I noticed our ferry, pulling out away from the dock. It wasn't turning around! It was heading straight off in the same direction as before. I started getting a sinking feeling in my stomach. Which island were we on?? I kept telling Kevin, "we MUST be on the right island. How could the crew just watch us get off on the wrong island without saying a word? They saw our tickets; they knew where we were going. Plus, this dock is big and nice and new. Why would the least visited island have a nicer dock than Inisheer? No, it's impossible for that to have happened." We walked further, towards the coast. As it rounded a bend, we could see another island off in the distance. Yep, we were on the *middle* island, not the last.

I was livid. There were tears. There was panicking. Inishmaan is NOT a big tourist destination. I didn't even know if there would be a hotel or a B&B for us to stay in, not to mention, it was probably too late to cancel our other reservation without a penalty. This was ruining everything!! I was so, so mad at those ferry operators.

Luckily, we did have cell phones, and I did have the number of the ferry company back in Doolin. I called them (thank heavens I could even get reception out there!) and explained, in some approximation of calmness, what had just happened to us. "How could they have let us get off the boat without at least announcing where we were? Why didn't they stop us since they knew our destination?" I asked the man. He told me he was sorry and that this shouldn't have happened. I told him he had to send another boat for us. He said there were no other boats leaving that day. I told him he had to fix it somehow--it was their fault. Do they expect their tourists to already know what the islands look like? Shouldn't they have a sign or an announcement or a man to check tickets as you exited? He said he'd see what he could do and call me back.

So we walked back to the dock. And we waited, and waited. I thought about calling to cancel our B&B reservation and beg for mercy, but I found that my cell phone was out of prepaid minutes! And Kevin's was out of batteries! Argh. Finally, the man called me back. (Luckily, incoming calls were free!) He said he'd tried to call me like 9 times or something, but for some reason it didn't ring. Anyways, he said we could catch a ferry from a different company that operated out of Galway (the land up at the top of the map) instead of Doolin. We could take a ferry from Inishmaan to Galway, and then wait an hour or two, then take another ferry from Galway to Inishmore. He said if we brought our receipt to him the next day, he'd reimburse the extra ticket costs. Since we pretty much had no other choice, we agreed.

So we waited in the sun for an hour or something, then rode back to Galway, where it started pouring (the weather changes fast in Ireland!). There we waited another 1 or 2 hours, then road another ferry back to Inishmore. At least the other company's ferries were MUCH more comfortable. But, I admit it, I was a total sour puss the whole time. I was soooooo upset that we were losing 5 hours of precious vacation time! Plus, I was not sure that there would be any bicycle rental places open by the time we arrived (it was about 7:30 by then if I remember right), and that was the only way to get to the B&B--it was too far to walk, and there's no such thing as a rental car or taxi around there. And, I was hungry. That probably didn't help either.

But, when we arrived, there were two men waiting right there to rent us bikes, thank heavens. I even snuck into the little grocery store and used their ATM as the lady was starting to close up. (Actually she almost locked me inside on accident, then apologized profusely.) We hesitated as to whether we should try to find a pub and get some dinner or head straight to the B&B. Worried that reception might close down at the B&B leaving us with nowhere to sleep, we decided we'd better head straight out. We got on our bikes and headed out, using the little map the bike guys had given us to navigate.

The bike ride turned out to be fairly strenuous, with some moderate hills to climb. Having lived in Flatland for the last five years, my bike legs are NOT accustomed to going up big hills! So it was a challenge, but at least the exercise brought on the endorphins and I started to feel less grumpy as we powered our way over the island. The enchanting views helped too--miles of shoreline, quaint scattered cottages, and everywhere mazes and mazes of little rock walls. It looked like a 1,000 year old labyrinth. It turns out that the walls were built by the farmers centuries ago. They weren't so much building walls as they were removing the rocks from their soil. There were so many of them that they just built all these walls everywhere. Pretty amazing to think about all that hard labor--the walls stretched out endlessly in every direction.

We finally arrived to the Kilmurvey House Bed and Breakfast, a little tired, but relieved that we had actually gotten there! The hostess wasn't around when we first got there, so we wandered into one of the sitting rooms and waited. The house was amazing. It was an old mansion converted into a B&B, and it was so fun to just poke around the various stairways and rooms. Our room (once the lady got back and gave us the key) was humongous for European standards, and had a balcony with a view of Dun Aengus. We freshened up a bit, and then the hostess knocked on the door and offered to open their little restaurant downstairs for us, since we hadn't had dinner yet and the town was all the way back near the pier. We very gratefully accepted the offer. She made us some amazing, amazing soup with amazing, AMAZING brown bread, and some delicious flatbread pizza. We were sooooo glad to eat it!

After dinner, we decided to utilize the remaining couple of hours of daylight to go on an abbreviated version of our bike tour. We meant to go to this old light house and ringfort ruin, but we took some back roads and managed to get a little lost. Well, not lost exactly--we always knew how to get back, but we never could get to that light house! We ended up going rather farther than we intended, and much of it was on bumpy, rocky dirt roads and pretty steep hills. We were downright mountain biking! Kevin was having a blast (he loves mountain biking, although I've always said I was NOT interested in that hobby). I was fairly scared but kind of exhilirated. I did get worried as night was falling, though, seeing as how we had no headlights. Luckily by then we had joined up with a real road again and didn't have to worry quite so much about seeing the rocks and holes in front of us.

As we rode, we saw several big bonfires and heard people singing and having parties. Apparently it was some sort of festival day. The guys who had rented us some bikes had mentioned that there would be bonfires with a "whole lot of crack going on." That may have sounded a little alarming, except that I had read enough guide books to know "crack" (actually spelled craic) just means conversation or chit-chat (what the Irish are famous for--the gift of gab.)

Anyways, we finally got back to the B&B, fairly exhausted, at around midnight. Thank goodness for those long summer days in Ireland!

Ireland Day 10: Skelligs!

Monday was probably my favorite day of the whole trip. It was also long and busy, so this is your warning that I cannot be held responsible for the length of this post! We also took a llllllot of pictures, so well, um...good luck getting through I guess. ;) I'll understand if you skim.

We started out early, after having a giant breakfast at our B&B of course, and drove down to what is called the "Ring of Kerry," which is a scenic route along the Kerry peninsula (very popular with the tourist buses).

We saw lots of nice scenery along the way, but the main point of our journey was to get to the little town of Portmagee, where we would hop aboard a boat headed to the Skellig Islands.

The what Islands, you are asking? The Skelligs! Skellig Michael to be specific. I had heard amazing things about Skellig Michael, so I made sure to include it on our itinerary, even though it did take up almost an entire day. Skellig Michael is this rocky, jutty-up island off the coast of Ireland where some monks decided to build a monastery back in the 7th century. They picked the Skelligs because they were so inhospitable, and the monks felt that the harder their lives were, the closer they'd be to God. So they carved stairs out of the rock face and built these little stone beehive huts on the very top and lived up there, in total isolation, for centuries!



















It is very remote, and they only allow a certain number of boats full of tourists to dock there each day, so we had to reserve our spots in advance. When we got to Portmagee, we found a little dock with several smallish speed boats. The tide was very low at this point, so we had to climb down a long ladder to get in (and then clamber over into the next boat since ours wasn't the one closest to the dock), which felt fairly adventurous.

The boat ride out was about an hour long, but it was pleasant with lots of green Irish coastline to watch as we went by. Kevin and I were sitting facing the back of the boat, listening to an audiobook on the mp3 player (we each got one earbud). Unfortunately, this meant that we didn't see the whale which apparently jumped out of the ocean at one point while we were on the boat. We didn't notice the commotion until it was gone. A lady tapped me on the shoulder and said, "It's whales!" but at first I thought she meant, "It's Wales!" and I was really confused, because that would be a VERY far distance to have traveled in an hour!

Anyways, soon we could see the twin rocks jutting out of the sea. The bigger one was where we were headed--Skellig Michael. But the smaller one was quite impressive also (it's just called Little Skellig). It is a bird nesting site, and is totally COVERED in birds. In fact, it was quite a shock when I suddenly realized as we got closer that all that white stuff covering the peaks were millions of birds. Well, I guess not millions. Tens of thousands. But you get the point.


When we arrived at the island, we had to ascend about 750 feet to get to monastery site. The beginning part was paved switchbacks (paved recently for tourists of course), but after a little while, we started climbing up the steps that the monks had carved out of the rock. It was quite the workout, actually. We did stop to take some pictures of some neat birds, including several puffins. We tried to climb fast so that we would beat the other tourists to the top. Unfortunately, another group had docked before us, so we didn't beat *all* of them up there. But at least there weren't too many people around when we first arrived at the ruin site.


The monastery buildings were incredible--extremely well preserved. It was just amazing to consider what it must have been like living up there. The stone huts are made out of dry stone, which (I can't remember if I've explained before) means they are laid on top of each other without mortar. Surprisingly, this made them extremely resilient to shifts in the earth, etc. and helped preserved them fully intact. In contrast, there was a much newer stone structure which had once been a church up there as well, but it had been made with mortar, and it was in ruins.

We got to spend an hour or two poking around the ruins and eating some of the (many) cookies we still had from our dinner the day before (although we had to eat the food away from the ruins so as to not encourage the birds to land--and poop--on the ruins. The bird poop is serious business, as I was soon to find out.) We were glad to have had those, because we didn't have time to buy sandwiches before we got on the boat as was the original plan (note to self: always double driving time estimates when in Ireland).




Then, we hopped back on the boat and headed off again--but not before one of the puffins pooped RIGHT on my head. GROSS!! I was enjoying the ruins so much, though, that it didn't phase me too much.

Once we arrived back to Portmagee, we had a nice late lunch at a little pastry shop--they also served sandwiches and soups. I had some sort of cheesy crab soup thing. I forget what it was called, but it was awesome. And it came with AMAZING brown bread. Kevin had the chicken salad which he also really liked. Of course, I had to have a pastry for dessert too.


Then, we drove the rest away around the Ring of Kerry, stopping along the way a couple of times to take pictures of the scenery and to check out a drystone ring fort (also made without mortar, like the monks' "beehives"),











and then ending at Killarney National Park. We saw a few quick sights such as "Ladies' View" overlooking the lakes (a bit of a letdown, probably mostly because the sky was overcast), the Torc Waterfall (and a bit of the forest surrounding it--I swear everything in the forest was glowing green), and the outside of Ross castle on the lakes, where I snapped one of my favorite pics from our trip. We would have stopped to see the gardens at Muckross house, but there was a sign warning that they closed the gates at exactly 7 and then charged you like $100 to get out after the gates were closed. It was only 10 minutes before 7, so we didn't have time.

We then drove up to a mountain pass in the National Park called the Gap of Dunloe. During the day it is filled with hikers and carriages (they call them pony and traps), but by now it was almost empty of other people. We had planned to hike up the pass for an hour or two, but we were still tired from our Skellig adventure, and the road was actually pretty good, so we just drove it! (Don't worry--cars are allowed; it's just too busy during the day usually to be able to drive up there). It was really beautiful, especially since by this time the sky had cleared up some and the sun was going down, creating vibrant colors and long shadows.

After we drove back down out of the pass, we had to make our way back to Camp. Unfortunately, we had some navigational troubles (you would not believe how windy and unmarked those roads are! Even with a compass, I got us fairly lost). I was rather stressed out, I'm afraid.

Luckily, Kevin wasn't and we made it back just fine--even if it was 11pm by then! But, the sun was just going down, so all was well. We were beat! But we were back, having had an Irishly fantastic adventure.

Ireland Day 9: Sunday, Foggy Sunday

The bed and breakfast we stayed at while in southwestern Ireland was in a little itty bitty village called Camp. I'm posting a map to orient you. You can see Dublin in the east, where we flew from on Saturday night, and then the little Kerry airport (where we flew into) in the south west is marked by a airplane symbol. Then the little yellow house is Tralee, where we went to church, and the flag is our B&B in Camp.

The B&B was up on a hill that looked out over the ocean--it was a gorgeous view, and although a little bit hard to find, the building was brand new and very nice. And our host John was super duper friendly and helpful (and he cooked a delicious breakfast, praising Kevin for going "full Irish"--including the baked beans). Unfortunately, we awoke Sunday morning to lots and LOTS of fog, so we couldn't enjoy the view very much as we sat at the window for breakfast.

We drove about 20 minutes to Tralee to go to church in the only branch that was anywhere near there (in fact, I chose our overnight stay location partly based on the fact that there actually *was* a branch nearby we could go to.) I had an exact address with directions because I had done some sleuthing around on the internet. (The church's website gave an incorrect address for the location of the Tralee Branch, with no meeting time listed or phone number. But, I managed to round up a Tralee Branch member's email address, and he replied to my request for more information.) It turns out that the meeting time was at 11am, just like almost all the congregations in Ireland. We were glad that the Irish are smart enough to start their church services at a reasonable time, as opposed to all those Hawaiian wards that all seemed to start at 8am! ;) (I guess it's because in the winter in Ireland it doesn't get light until quite late in the morning?)

Anyways, we set out fairly confidently for church, leaving ourselves lots and lots of extra time for parking and finding the building. However, we soon found that even our specific address with directions were not much help when none of the streets were labeled, not to mention the addresses. And, we're talking major spaghetti tangle type streets here. We parked the car and walked back and forth down the street we were pretty sure was the right one. Nothing. Finally, we went back to look (again) at the town map that they had posted on a big sign in the center of town.

By now church was already supposed to have started. I was getting grumpy and a little desperate---I *really* wanted to go to church this Sunday! But it looked like we'd just have to give up. I offered a silent prayer that we'd somehow be able to find the church building.

Just then, a young man started walking behind us, dressed up in a suit and tie. He said, "you must be Mormons." And then he led us to church! (I think that the fact that I was holding a Book of Mormon may have clued him in.) The building was actually one we'd passed at least twice already. It was just a couple of rooms upstairs from this storefront. The door was open, and there was a little paper that said "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" on it, but since the door was open, the sign was perpendicular to the sidewalk. (Does that make sense? Bottom line: we couldn't see the sign.) We felt so blessed that God sent us *another* guide to find our way to the church building, just at the right time, just like He had in Bray. I bet that young man didn't realize he was answering a prayer by being late to church that day!

The branch was VERY small--even smaller than the Bray branch. But the members had very strong faith. Many of them were converts. One of the Sacrament Meeting speakers was the fellow I had emailed for directions. He was actually a theology Ph.D. student, and had a lot of interesting things to say. We loved getting to know the people there and feel their testimonies a little bit.

After church we came back to the B&B to have a nap in the hopes that maybe possibly the fog would let up a little in the mean time. No such luck. We decided to strike out and take our "scenic" drive anyhow. We had planned to drive around the Dingle Peninsula (see the little jutty out part near our B&B on the map?), which is famous for being a very pretty drive. Unfortunately, mostly what we saw was just fog. There were some places were it let up a little and you could see some nice coastlines. And, we were able to see Inch Beach, which is the longest beach in Ireland. The beach is also very, very wide with lots of sand. But, the water was COOOOOOLD! Especially since we'd just been in Mexico's super warm waters a few weeks earlier. It was Sunday anyway, so we wouldn't have gone swimming, but we definitely had no desire to! It was interesting how dark the water was too--almost black. Very different from the crystal clear Caribbean.

We bought dinner at a little convenience store at a gas station (excuse me, I mean petrol station), where we bought sandwiches, juice, and two or three large packages of cookies (aka biscuits). My favorite were the chocolate covered "digestives" which despite the weird name were really yummy.

We took a little windy road to get there and back from our B&B. It wound up mountains and back down, only one lane wide the whole time. It was rather treacherous because of the fog. Luckily, we could at least see far enough ahead of us to know when we needed to find one of the sparsely strewn pull-out areas (where the road would widen slightly so that two cars could actually pass each other) because of an oncoming car.

It was a good Sunday, even though the fog was disappointing. It was good that we could take it easy, because we needed our rest for the next (very busy) day!