Where the Grass is Greener: Day 4

The Aran Islands

The “Happy Hooker” was sailing smoothly. M was in an even cheerier mood that morning as he proudly announced that he was successful in his farm-animal-petting crusade. A donkey and a cow in one of the neighboring farms next to our bed and breakfast were very accommodating. The weather wasn’t as sunny as M though and for the first day since our trip, the skies were stubbornly gray. The wind reminded us of the stinging treachery of the sea. A few unfortunate girls on the boat wore flip flops and miniskirts.

Before long, the Aran Islands came into view. Inisheer is one of the smaller islands and it looked like a collage of grassy fields, unforgiving rocks and occasional wooden houses. I could not imagine living here in winter when the sea would offer no escape. As we boarded off the boat, men in horse carriages tried to cajole us into a tour. We opted for renting bicycles instead. The road started out smooth though a little hilly. We stopped at a church ruin encircled by a not so ancient cemetery. All of the tombstones had imposing Celtic heads and tall grass almost matched their height. Strangely enough, the church was several feet lower than the cemetery as if embedded into the ground. I suppose they must have unearthed it at some point and the local residents began burying their loved ones around the ruins.  It was a small church with a modest altar and the engravings of a Jesus-like figure suggested the medieval age. A little black bird paused on one of the crumbling walls, holding a squirming worm in its beak. I’m sure it was utterly indifferent to all churches, histories and gods.

We ventured our bikes away from the island’s core and towards the shores. This time, the road was unpaved and bumpy. The prehistoric stone fences here were different from others we’ve seen in Ireland. Each rock seems sharper and they were stacked in a wild, vertical way that ended in jagged lines at the top. Even evidence of domestication was somehow harsher and more rugged: how people must have adapted to the hardships of this isolated place. Many of these fences contained grazing horses. We stopped at one that had an elegant, white mother horse and its darker child. At first, M thought the brown body of the baby horse was lifeless but it quickly jumped to its feet once we approached. M climbed over the fence to play with them, offering them apples that they didn’t have a taste for. Further down the road, he found another horse that happily crunched the apple, spraying juice everywhere through its massive teeth.

Zigzagging through these stone fences, we made it to an iron shipwreck. The orange, rusted thing was perched atop of the rocky shore as if it simply fell from the sky. It must have been a monstrous wave that could carry the ship so far onto land. The ship’s belly was a crisscross of fallen beams, a gaping engine. A quick climb on the ship’s skeleton side took us to the upper level, where we could survey the sea lapping up to a shore of pocket-holes and stones. The next stop was one of the many abandoned castles. The hills became steeper and the road turned to gravel. From the top of one of these hills, I started barreling down much faster than I would have liked and tried to slow down by squeezing the back brake. This made my front wheel spin out of control and before I knew it, I was heading straight towards a prehistoric stone wall. I think I must have screamed. One never quite remembers what one’s body does in times of pure, undiluted fear. I really believed that my death was inevitable. Thankfully, the bike was aimed at a perfect 90 degrees at the wall and the front wheel simply bounced back as I hopped off the terrorizing ride. I burst into tears and tantrums.

It took awhile for me to shake off the trauma but M eventually coaxed me up to the castle we were on our way to see. It was like many others that we’ve seen but the lush green grass and multitude of wildflowers gave me an Ophelia moment as I laid down among the purple, yellow petals. We went on in our bikes along the edge of the islands. Here the roads became even more hostile as they were made of large chunks of gray rock. The bumpiness and the descending rain led us to take refuge in a café/hostel. The crew of the ship were eating there too and all of these strappy young men drank a neon-orange energy drink I’ve never seen before. Even after a hot cup of milk tea, I had a hard time shaking off the cold and wetness that had seeped into my bones. I can understand why Seamus Heaney and many other writers and artists found the Aran islands poetic, but I also found them terribly uncomfortable. I suppose misery can be inspiring.

On the boat ride home, I noticed a large group of French tourists whom we saw at the church ruins earlier and some American girls behind us who were flirting with American boys. Once ashore, we took a few moments in the car to warm up before heading towards Galway. We stopped to see the Dolmen on our way, one of the many sights of rugged County Clare. These five slabs of stone look like a little temple and are reminiscent of Stonehenge in England. Just like the other prehistoric sights, little is known of the Dolmen and the most anyone can say is purely based on guesswork. What I found the most curious was the ground. It consisted of many misshaped platforms of rock with deep gaps in between them. Walking around was like following a precarious maze.

A few wrong turns could not keep us away from Galway City. This was the biggest city we had seen since that brief morning in Dublin. It pulsed and sounded very much like an urban center. We had been looking forward to a lively hostel but much to our surprise, the private room we booked was in a townhouse across the street from Sleepzone Hostel. It was a very peculiar arrangement of an empty, white-walled house full of IKEA furniture. The room didn’t even have a rug and the bathroom was empty of towels. It felt very clinical to stay in a place like this. And even when we tried to befriend people in the kitchen and common room, we weren’t very successful.

For dinner, we found a trendy restaurant called Busker Browne’s. The cuisine was “New Irish” and delicious. My bangers and mash was a heaping full of juicy sausages and fluffy mashed potatoes all in an apple jam sauce. Unexpectedly, a band started setting up and locals squeezed in with us in the front booth. It turns out we had chanced on jazz night when an 18-piece band transformed the restaurant into the land of Tony Bennett. The lady next to me gushed about how the band originally started with a high school student who wanted to form a jazz band and now they play every Monday. She had driven over an hour to be here. She told me about her artwork in printmaking and how she works in business administration of the arts. Before long, the “usuals” were jumping up for some very graceful swing dancing. They obviously all took the same dance class and gathered here every week. One old man in a black button-down was the best dancer and all the ladies wanted to twirl with him. A pretty redheaded woman started chatting with us as well and we really felt the warmth of the western Irish. A bunch of drunk girls kept jumping up to the front to wiggle their bodies idiotically – such a contrast to the swing dancers. One blonde girl in a fuchsia dress was especially enthusiastic in her gyrations except much to her embarrassment, there was a sticker stuck to the bottom of her dress the whole time. The suave singer/announcer shamed her by pointing it out to the whole restaurant.

The jazz music had its flaws but it was such a refreshing surprise that we stayed long after our food was finished. Eventually we took leave of the friendly swing dancers and went to a more traditional Irish pub. There, we couldn’t escape the American tourists as a woman and teenage girl befriended us. The woman was a single mom who worked as a firefighter and constantly talked about her boyfriend. The teenage girl, whom we thought was her daughter, was actually her child’s friend on the tour and was confidently drinking her Guinness. I found them tiresome and we headed home pretty soon. All around us, we caught glimpses of boisterous Irish college students mixing with the tourists and drunkenly wandering the streets. One girl tried to sell us something but neither of us could understand what she was talking about. Maybe it was pot. Or condoms? The hostel room was cold and about as comfortable as a hospital bed but fatigue conquered all.