A few weekends ago I went to Galway. Unfortunately, we got there Thursday night and so only really had full days on Friday and Saturday. On Friday we did a bus tour of the Galway area, and on Saturday we ventured off to the Aran islands and rented bikes (which proved to be a big mistake, but it was an adventure). Pictures and text:
First stop on the tour was a placed called Aillwee cave. It's a huge cave formation that was discovered by a farmer in the 1950's and kept a secret until the 1970's (if memory serves, this is why I should have posted this all up a little sooner)
There's me outside of the cave. Incase you couldn't tell, the background has nothing to do with the cave, this is looking away from it out towards the country side.
The picture doesn't do a very good job of conveying it, but this is a limestone waterfall of sorts. Water was only trickling down the wall, but they say after a rain the trickle turns a lot more intense. It looked a look cooler in life, you could see the water erosion, my camera doesn't do very well in dark caves.
There's a nice stalagmite (and if you look behind it, you'll notice some stalactites)
And here's what this all looks like from the outside. Not a very obvious cave, eh?
The place was actually huge inside, my camera just didn't really keep up with the darkness so only a few pictures turned out to be postable. The loop of the cave we walked only took about half an hour, but I guess there are spelunkers who have ventured in thousands of meters. Apparently, it used to be underground river passageways (which made everything really smooth. it felt almost man-made in that regard).
A random castle and random church (respectively) along the way. No real significance to these, they were just around when I happened to be armed and ready with my camera.
Next stop was a dolmen, which is a stone formation used for the ritual disposal of a corpse after death.
I guess what happens is that a corpse was placed on the top of the stone until it decomposed, and then once it was reduced to bones, the bones were buried underneath. This particular dolmen doesn't have any particular significance, but it's over 2000 years old and they said they have found the remains of 30-some-odd different people underneath of it. I guess maybe I shouldn't be smiling in that picture...
I don't think they had this last time we were through here!
Next stop was the Cliffs of Moher. We happened to pass through Doolin, a small town me and the family spent a night in when we visited Ireland 6 years ago.
This wasn't my first time at the Cliffs, I had also visited them when I came here on that vacation, but they didn't fail to impress a second time. Very serene (despite the intense winds and hundreds of other tourists all around).
That concluded the bus tour, mostly. On Saturday, we hopped a bus to a ferry to the Aran Islands. We rented bikes there, which turned out to be a huge mistake because the maps we had of the island weren't very clear, and so we didn't really get to see many of the attractions (which I suppose is okay, because there really aren't many). Also, these were the worst bikes I've ever been on in my entire life. My butt literally hurt for 2 days afterwards. I guess they're trying to promote a crime-free island by showing people what it's like in prison.
Just a random shot of the coastline, I thought it was somewhat picturesque...
And this one pretty much sums up what you can expect to see on the Aran Islands... horses, grass, and rocks... not to say it's not pretty.
So anyways, we biked around, went the wrong direction like 5 times, and finally came to a stretch of beach that's famous for having tons of seals along it. Fate would have it that it was high tide, and that's when seals like to hunt. So there was not a single seal in sight. I didn't take a picture because I figured, why try to document and remember the disappointment? Anyways, a local who was around told us that the seals wouldn't be returning for about another 2 hours, so due to time constraints (i.e. our ferry would be leaving before then), we had to scratch that. Erin and Kathleen weren't having any more of the bikes and so they headed back to town, I was determined to make it to Fort Dun Aonghas - which was the one place I really wanted to see in the Aran Islands. You can google it to learn more, but basically it's an old fort that's built right into a cliff face, so it literally drops straight off into the sea. It's pretty cool, but difficult to describe, so google it and check out a picture if you're interested.
Aannnnddd, this is as close as I made it to Dun Aonghas (that's it up there, off in the distance). Once I got there on bike, I had about an hour and 20 minutes until my ferry left, and it was about a 40 minute bike ride back to town. You couldn't ride your bike up to the fort, you had to walk up. The people at the admissions area said it was about a 20-30 minute walk, depending on how fast you took it. So if I went, I would've gotten up there only to have to turn around so that I wouldn't miss my ferry. Oh well, atleast I got to see it from a distance and enjoy the bike ride back at a more leisurely pace...
Here's a random shot on the way back...
I happened to pass by a few horses on the way back that seemed interested in me. They were real friendly, I went to take some pictures of them with the landscape in back, and they both just walked right up to me. My guess is that they're just used to tourists giving them food and so have learned that it pays to be friendly...
So that's it for the Aran Islands. It probably sounds pretty crappy, but it was actually really nice. It was relaxing to just bike around and see the cottages and landscape and whatnot. Sunday morning we tried to do some shopping in Galway (the girls wanted random crap, I figured maybe I could find some things for Christmas) but, as it turns out, the shops are mostly closed on Sundays. We still wandered around town and just took it all in before heading back to Dublin on an afternoon train. Here's a random shot of what the city is like...
And so that does it for this installment. Sorry it's so late in the coming. I'll get my Thanksgiving in Amsterdam up tomorrow, and then Thursday I'm off to Rome so I'll have some more pictures. Consider yourselves lucky if you see those before I get home (but i'll make an effort... maybe...)
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