Ireland

As soon as I handed my boarding pass to the Aer Lingus agent, who smiled as she cheerily exclaimed, "Enjoy your flight!" I was on vacation.  Stepping onto the plane in the Charles DeGaulle airport was like stepping into a US embassy in another country.  You may not be home, but theoretically you're on American soil.  But in this case, Irish soil.  I was off to Ireland once again, having become enamored by its lively beauty and friendly citizens back in 2008 during my fall break in Strasbourg.  Last time, I visited a friend from high school who was studying abroad in Cork, and together we also went to Dublin.  I'd be going back to Dublin this time too, as well as spending a night in Galway, but the real reason I going was to experience first-hand the enigmatic beauty of the Aran Islands.


I've wanted to visit the islands for quite some time.  I studied them in a 20th century Irish literature course a few years ago, and then performed in Martin McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaan last year, which takes place on the middle-sized island.  (McDonagh has written a play for each of the islands-- Inishmaan, The Lieutenant of Inishmore and The Banshees of Inisheer, which apparently was so bad that McDonagh never wanted it published.)  I had seen so many pictures of the islands' rocky landscapes and breathtaking cliffs that I knew I needed to see everything in person, and what better time to go than the beginning of March, when anyone with a lick of sense goes not to the Aran Islands, but to the Canary Islands. 

My adventures began in Galway.  Since the ferry for the islands left early Saturday morning, I needed to stay in Galway Friday night, and found refuge with a lovely couchsurfing host.  She showed me around the city, which is absolutely enchanting.  It's much less touristy than Dublin, and personally, I found it a lot more charming and welcoming.

 Saturday morning, I set off early for the ferry.  Calder, whom you may remember from my London adventures, was a fellow cast mate in Inishmaan and was my partner-in-crime on my Aran adventures.  We had wanted to visit all of the islands, but ended up just being able to go to Inishmore, the biggest of the three islands.  From here, I'll let the pictures do the talking...

 

The desolate landscape of the island in the gray and foggy morning gave way to a vibrant blue-green sea when the sun broke free in the afternoon.  Calder and I biked and hiked the length of the island, which is about a mile and a half wide and five and a half miles long.  Having come during the off-season, we had the island mostly to ourselves, relatively speaking.  There were a few bus tours full of day trippers, but it didn't begin to rival the 2,000 daily visitors the island receives in the summer, a local told me.  (There are only 800 inhabitants of the island to begin with.)  Not only were we able to visit the touristy sites in peace, like the ancient Dun Aengus fort set on the cliffs, we were also able to strike up conversations with the locals in the pubs (although they were the ones who struck up the conversations with us!)

Sadly, Monday came too soon and we had to head back to the mainland.  We wished we could've had more time to spend on the island, and, well, be careful what you wish for.  From the window of our lovely sea-facing hostel, as we were just about to head out the door to leave, I saw a ferry pulling out of the port.  Our ferry.  That apparently left at 8:15am and not 8:30am, as we had thought.  A quick, perhaps rather belated, glance at our tickets revealed that the ferry was indeed scheduled to leave at 8:15am.  The biggest problem was that there was only one other ferry to the mainland and it wasn't until the evening, and Calder had a plane to catch from Dublin that night.  Oops.  Those of you who know both Calder and me will probably be surprised that we could have done something so stupid.  And I'd be right with you on that.  However, we quickly rebounded and found the number for the airline that had multiple flights to and from Inishmore each day and were able to book a flight that left in a couple of hours.  In the end, we were able to have a few more hours on the island, which included the long but beautiful walk to the airport, and had a spectacular plane ride, just us and the pilot, in a little nine-seater  that afforded us an amazing aerial view of the islands.

Once in Dublin, I said goodbye to Calder and hello to Amelia!  She and I spent two nights in Dublin, packing in as much as we could in just a few days.

We weren't the only ones in Dublin.  Justin Bieber was there too. 
We didn't see him, but we did decide to follow around the
throng of screaming girls for awhile who were desperately
hoping to get a glimpse of him while he shopped in Tommy Hilfiger.

Finally, it was back home to France.... Not something either of us were looking forward to.  "But you're going to France!  A beautiful country!  Amazing food!  Fashion!  The Eiffel Tower!" you might say, using far too many exclamation marks.  And you'd be partly right.  It's true that there's still some excitement in coming back to France, a country that I love despite what I may write, but it's still a return to the known and to the ordinary.  It's still coming back home after vacation, even though you may be tired and smelly and looking forward to being back in your own bed after a nice long shower.  But as I laid in bed my first night back with my eyes close, all I could see were the stunning cliffs of Inishmore with the violently blue waves crashing loudly so far below where I lay peering down in frozen rapture.