Inis Mor

So. Tired. This weekend was great so far, but I can barely stand.

We left for the bus after I posted yesterday, which after about an hour dropped us off at a pier where a ferry was waiting. We got on that and arrived on Inis Mor, the biggest of the three islands, around 8 p.m. It seems like most tourists venture over on Saturday, for most of the people traveling with us were fluent Irish speakers and a lot seemed to be bringing flowers to their moms on the island for Mother's Day.

Our hostel was easy to find (it's the green building on the far right in the picture below), and we had no problem getting checked in. The woman running it then was actually from North Carolina, and we ended up going out with her later that evening. After dropping off our bags in the room, though, we headed out to find food at The American Bar. I've simply got to describe my supper: Miriam and I split a beef lasagna dish, which meant I was expecting the usual Italian-style pasta dish. But oh no, welcome to Ireland! There was one noodle, some cheese on top, and lots and lots of beef in the middle. No tomato sauce or herbs, that's for sure. I was slightly surprised, to say the least, but it was still quite tasty.

Anyway, after we ate, we met up with the NC woman and three other people who have been staying in the hostel over the past week. One girl was Canadian, one was German, and the guy was Australian. We only went to one pub with them, the one attached to the hostel, so we could get some sleep, but it was lots of fun. Our discussions ranged from teaching the Australian what "tooting" and "split" in specific American definitions, to why most men outside of North America aren't circumsized, and even to something about a play about Greek women protesting their husbands with corn flake boxes. Yeah, it was interesting. Lots of laughing all around.

When we got back to our room, Alice handed out shower caps for each of us to wear so we wouldn't get lice. Aren't they pretty? What's gross is that when we woke up this morning, our body heat or something condensed inside, so our hair was wet. Blech. I noticed it at 5 a.m. when some random guy tried to get into our room, but since I was sleepy I didn't think anything of it.Like I said, the pier was right outside of the hostel, and I swear that the tide was out the entire day, plus the night we got there. This other ferry boat in the distance was beached until late this evening when we left because the tide was out. I really wanted to run down there but we never got to it.
After a nice breakfast of toast and cereal, we rented four brand new bikes from the bike hire place next to the hostel and started out along the coast. Here are some of the views from our first pit stop (Miriam and I especially are very out of shape!):
SEALS! Everyone kept saying that we wouldn't see any...heh.
You'll notice that Miriam is in lots of these pictures. She's always posing in epic stances like this.
This was on a random dilapidated building that we passed by. From left to right, it's Miriam, Alice, and Courtney.
Our four matching bikes--how adorable.

A second beach that we found right before getting to the first site.

Alrighty: our first site (of only two that we found...) was Don Aengus, an ancient fort on the coast. It used to be larger, but parts of it have eroded or been taken apart. Even so, it's really impressive. We lucked out and got to hang out in it by ourselves for an hour because the rest of the tourists arrived today on the ferry. Because we started out at 9 a.m., we got a head-start on everyone.

Anyway, here's an artistic interpretation of people attacking the site in the Visitor's Center. He looks pretty excited about it.
The three stages of the site, from the Mesolithic to the Early Iron Age and then the Medieval Period.
From the bottom of the hill. After biking for an hour and then walking up this hill, we were all exhausted.
Crazy things like this started to happen:

And then we remembered an Irish myth that we read in class, called The Second Battle of Moytirra. We've been meaning to re-enact it sometime, so we thought we'd brainstorm...

Didn't work so well. We might try again later when we've actually written a script.

After that lovely interlude and a small snack, we explored the site itself. It's set on a cliff edge.

Somewhere in that direction, I might find you guys!
The typical view from the island, whether at this site or elsewhere. The houses were few and far between.
A little hole that we found, one of several built into the walls of the fort.
Like I said, Miriam poses epic-ly everywhere.
After that, we somehow got talking about how we should get tattoos of the Claddaugh design, but with gangster fingers instead of the normal hands holding the heart. That led to Alice drawing temporary ones on all of us...

After we left there (and oh yeah--Mom! I got you some yarn), we saw a sign for a lighthouse and signal tower. Of course, it was at the top of a huge hill and we had just killed ourselves going up some hills on the bikes, so really we made it halfway up and then camped out on this platform thing before going back down. I think we missed a lot of sites on the way too because we never ended up with a map of the island.
On the way back into town, we passed back by this old church. There were a lot of older buildings in the area.
We went back to the hostel to eat our packed lunches, and I noticed that the crocuses were already blooming! Spring is definitely coming, and the island was showing it. It was a lot warmer than the mainland, which I guess is normal for all three islands.
After lunch, we tried to find Black Fort but got lost and ended up in a cemetery instead. It was sad to see some of the tombstones, like one that was dedicated to two 20-year-old brothers who were lost at sea or another that was put up for a six-year-old son by his "sorrowing parents." Linguistically, however, it was interesting to see that Irish, still the main language of the islands, is used for a lot of the markers...like this one.
There was the remains of an ancient church in the middle of the yard.

A wishing well of sorts? There was a matching one on the opposite side of the building.
Some beautiful carvings near the entranceway. I wish I knew the story behind the place.

And then, as our last site, we finally found the Black Fort. To get there, we had to go up this crazy hill, walk up a stone path (after we had to leave our bikes behind because it got too bumpy), freestyle across the barren landscape, and finally find the place. It was an adventure, but completely worth it. Here's some shots:

There it is in the distance. It's on a cliff overhang; there are coves to either side of it.
Like this one on the way in.


The walls had some interesting stonework and protrusions...and possibly a tunnel that Alice crawled in to.
Taking a moment to be happy about finally finding the place.


Look at this landscape. It'll be so weird to go home and see deciduous trees and grass again.
For some reason, there were rocks protruding vertically all along the ground. Did someone go through and place them like that?

And that was basically it! We went to the wool sweater shops in town after we couldn't stand being on bikes anymore (I am so, so sore) and then waited for the ferry. It was so nice to come home to Galway. I cooked supper, wrote some postcards, did some household stuff, looked up a recipe for chicken pot pie so I can make it for potluck Sunday, and now I'm just finishing this. I think it'll be bedtime quite soon--I'm exhausted from the busy-ness of the day. My plan is to get up early and get errands done then so I can come home, cook, and get working on homework.

So with that in mind, good night!