Galway & The Aran Islands

The harbor in Galway

Galway and the Aran Islands: hands down my favorite trip so far.  It took me and my friends Ellie and Emily 6½ hours my train and bus to get to the city (located on the western coast of Ireland), but it was more than worth the effort.  We stepped off the bus to be greeted by our cozy cottage-like hostel, conveniently right next to our bus stop.  Our hostel, “Galway City Hostel” was right on the Eyre Square, which is the center of the town.   The next morning marked the opening of the international Christmas market, and so we were dazzled by food and gifts from around the world.  French crepes, German sausage, Finnish slippers.  You get the idea J  I even bought an Irish flute!! Lol it sounds awful when I try to play it.  We then wandered through the town that was all decorated for Christmas, saw the beautiful harbor, old churches, and even James Joyce’s wife, Nora Barnacle’s, little house.  Everything was cute and Irish and it was the one city so far that I could definitely live in, in the future.

Nora Barnacle's house

We also decided to take a trip to the Aran Islands, one of the most classically “Irish” areas of the whole Emerald Isle.  The biggest of the three islands is Inish Mor and even that one only has 800 inhabitants.  Irish (Gaelic) is the primary language there and I got to hear it spoken many times; it definitely is not related to English, but rather to me sounds like a bouncier German or Russian language.  You can’t book tours for the island in advance, but once you get off the ferry there are native guides in minibuses or in horse drawn carts waiting to haggle.  We were fortunate to get a hilarious local named Bertie who was “born and raised” there and he gave us a great deal for 8 euros (I honestly don’t know how they make a living…).  He drove us and other Americans and a couple from Tasmania around and gave us the inside scoop on the island’s history and what it was living there.

The cliffs by fort Dun Aengus on the Aran Islands

Visually, it was absolutely stunning.  It was snaked with more than 7,000 miles of handmade stonewalls because the earlier villagers had to do something with the rock removed for farming.  Rolling green hills, views of the ocean everywhere, stone forts dating back to 1100 B.C., church ruins with very Celtic looking cemeteries----and my favorite: the 300 ft. cliffs.   I felt as if I was on the edge of the world looking out on the Atlantic, knowing that the closest land was America.  The cliffs took my breath away and even made me a little nauseous from their sheer height.  However, lying down on the edge and looking down is an experience I will never forget!!

We also got to some of the island’s famous seals, which the islanders refuse to kill because they believe they are sacred and are embodiments of deceased people.

Thanks mom and dad for giving me this trip as a Christmas present---it was one of the best I’ve ever had! Love you <3