Travel Tales: Connemara

When we arrived, my friend’s family, who speak Irish, treated us to a chicken dinner feast that had more potato dishes than I had ever seen. At the risk of sounding like Bubba from “Forest Gump,” we devoured baked potatoes, fried potatoes, mashed potatoes, and my personal favorite: potato stuffing! There’s something there for everyone, the (many) potato dishes, the landscape, the language and traditional Irish culture (including singing the National Anthem in Irish at the end of the night in a dance club).

The Cliffs of Moher, located off the coast of Galway, are jagged monsters that cut into the sea more than 100 feet below.  My sister and I traveled to the Cliffs on a rainy day; it was so foggy we couldn’t see where the cliffs began or ended. So intent on getting pictures of something, we took pictures of cows in a nearby pasture.  If you don’t want to chance a foggy day or can’t get out to the Cliffs yourself, this virtual tour is a good alternative.

I had a lot of visitors when I was in Ireland and I don’t think it was so much my company they came for as it was the country and the Irish people.  When my grandma, whose parents came from Millstreet, Cork, came to visit, it was her first trip to her homeland.  My mom and grandma stayed with me for one week and during that time we had glorious sunny days—it rained only one day that week in the usually rainy month of April!

After a couple of sunny days in Galway, we decided to take advantage of the weather and took a ferry to the Aran Islands. Three islands make up the Aran Islands: Inis Mór (Big Island), Inis Meáin (Middle island) and Inis Oírr (East island); we visited the largest island, Inis Mór. When we arrived at the port, we were greeted by men offering horse and carriage rides around the island. Mac and Jack, man and horse, showed us the island and brought us to the largest of the stone forts on the island, Dún Aonghasa.