Another Island Adventure

Last weekend I decided to be adventurous again and head off for a weekend on my own. My destination was Inis Oirr (or Inisheer in english). Its the smallest of the Aran Islands, the largest is Inishmore that I visited with Aunt Gail. So this is the view of the islands from the ferry harbour. It is less than 3 Sqr km and there are around 250 people that live on it. I stayed in the only Hostel on the island, conveniently located right next to one of only two pubs on the island!



As a big part of the local tourism trade is horse and buggy rides, a lot of the locals have horses. This one lives in the islanders front yard...clearly the best way to keep the grass short! Daddy, can I have a pony? It'll save you time cutting the lawn so its actually an investment!




There is music every night in the pub. On friday these three guys came with their flute-type thing, a weird looking bag-pipe instrument, and an accordian. Some random tourist also had his guitar there so he played along too! So FUN! Unfortunately I drank 4 pints of Guiness on an empty stomach and got a little sick at 3am...SO worth it though!



No, this is not the toilet I got sick in, but I thought it was SO funny that the sink was in the stall beside the toilet...the first one I went into I thought was the disabled stall, but no, all 3 stalls had sinks! How lazy can you be! Of course I washed my hands while peeing, unfortunatly I forgot that I then had to wash them AGAIN after I was done! This idea is not without its flaws!


These are pictures of the island from the highest point on the islands, just 61m above sea level. It was a beautiful of course!






This is the Caislean Ui Bhriain and Dun Formna (translantion: O'Brien Castle and Formna Fort) on the island. It was a 3 story tower house built by the O'Brien family, who owned the Island until 1585 (hey Katie, maybe you should see if you still have some claim on this thing! Its a bit of a fixer-uper but how cool to own a castle!)




When the island was first inhabited the soil was so rocky that the locals had to pull up all the stones so that they could farm. Unfortunately the soil turned out to not be so great for agriculture but how beautiful are all the stone walls that zig zag all over the island! They were clearly forward thinkers!


You can't really tell, but that piece of land on the horizon is the Cliffs of More. That little speck in the lower right is the island's light house...I walked SO much...for like 5 hours...and I still didn't see the whole island! All those miles of stone walls really add up to a lot of walkways!





This is a picture of the Tobar Eanna (St. Enda's Holy Well). Apparently it has healing properties and if you see an eel it is a good omen...I didn't see one...I actually think that no one has ever seen one except after having a few pints at the pub!