After a day of travel we arrived in Doolin: Airplane from Paris to Shannon, bus from Shannon to Ennis, 4 hours hanging out and reading in a bookstore coffee shop, and a bumpy bus from Ennis to Doolin (One of the only times I have felt carsick). Doolin is a minuscule town very near the famous Cliffs of Moher.... It consists of 4 pubs, 2 hostels, 1 cafe, 1 music store, 3 souvenir shops, 2 sweater shops, 1 tiny grocery store and about 20 bed and breakfasts. The hostel we stayed at has looks like something out of a story book, with a river next to it and a donkey next door. They had free laundry with detergent, free internet, awesome kitchen, free tea, really warm comforters and a fireplace! This hostel promotes community: the free tea lures people to come out and sit by the fire and talk with eachother.... the rooms which had 8 beds had no locks and generally the doors were just left open.
We both were pretty tired the first night but decided to go out with to women we had met at the hostel. This was a bad idea, we were both so tired that after about a half an hour, we decided we couldn't take it anymore and went home ----- our drinks unfinished. :(
The next morning we explored the town and bought some groceries so that we could cook our meals for the first time in a while! After a breakfast/lunch of scrambled eggs and grilled cheese sandwiches (with cheddar!!! We were so excited to have cheddar again!), we took the advise of the guy at the hostel and took a little "path" to the closest cliffs/beach. It was so pretty! We were basically walking across people's land but we were far enough away from everything, that we could not see a single modern thing to spoil the view! It was just grass, rocks and water... and occasionally a cow. We walked in a loop and ended up back at the hostel. We rested and
read before making a pasta dinner. During dinner we talked with the three Floridian medical students who were staying in our room and a German man. We decided to all go out together to hear the local music. We sat next to the band which consisted of one guitar, one button accordion, and some sort of bagpipe/ flute. They sounded fantastic! This area is known for its traditional live music.The next day we took the ferry to the smallest of the neighboring Aran Islands, Inisheer. On our 3 hour walk around the island we found alot of rock walls and more rock.... We also found an enormous rusting shipwreck on the coast! We walked inside and could see exactly how it had hit the rocks. (It wasn't till afterward that someone told us that it is about to collapse! :o
We only had enough time to go up to the small, crumbling castle after we finished the walk. I am sure we weren't supposed to, but we climbed up the crumbling walls and up to the second
and third stories which are no longer covered. So, we didn't have time to actually look at the town before our ferry came, but we enjoyed ourselves. :) We rested again and then made a mashed potato dinner. (Yes, we ate potatoes in Ireland!We still wanted to walk to the Cliffs of Moher, but we didn't think we had enough time since we had to leave the next morning. However, the guy who runs the hostel told us that we could walk along the cliff to the tourist center and then the bus to Galway (which we were taking that morning anyway) would bring us back to Doolin. Right in front of the hostel it makes a loop, so all we had to do was get off, get our stuff and get back on! So we did exactly that. It took us about two hours to walk from Doolin to the tourist center, those two hours were incredible!
The views were breathtaking and we were walking right on the edge. (By that I mean that sometimes, we were 10 inches from the edge, and sometimes we had to step over a large chunks that were gone, which meant stepping over a 200 meter drop.) We had heard that it was extremely muddy and that other people ruined that shoes and pants. We only had one set so we just decided to take off our shoes and role up our pants. We got weird looks from the few people we saw... The mud made the adjacent drop off even more nerve wracking. :) We were early for the bus so we hung out at the gift shop and began to realize that it was actually pretty cold there. It took me a while to warm up again!Anyway, Doolin was incredible, and I would most definitely go back if I had the chance!
Maria
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