We woke early, our inner clocks still a bit out of sync. It was already fully daylight at 5 a.m. Eventually we went out walking on the rocky lane past Lane Lodge, populated with horses and cows and b&bs. We returned to Lane Lodge for breakfast and more of Teresa's lovely tea. She serves Barry's Tea, and says it tastes better in Ireland because the water doesn't have chorine added to it. Everytime we had tea in Ireland, it was served with both white sugar and brown. Their brown sugar is similar to our raw sugar.
Theresa's Full Irish Breakfast includes
a rasher of bacon (which looks and tastes more like a thin slice of ham, about three times as wide as our American bacon),
black and white puddings (These have a little taste in common with meatloaf, but they are far more delicious. There's a sausage flavor, and the oatmeal the puddings contain give them a chewy nutty texture. Eaten with brown sauce they are heavenly),
Irish sausages (light and juicy and unfortunately not available in the US except by expensive mail order),
a fried egg,
a fried tomato,
and homemade brown bread, a yummy rustic companion to marmalade and Irish butter.
Theresa also serves fruit and cereal and yogurt but we concentrated on the foods that are harder to find in the US.
We talked with a couple from Connecticut, also staying at Lane Lodge, and they gave us a ride to the ferry to the Aran Islands. We bought our tickets and boarded the ferry moments before its journey to Inisheer. We stood near the railing of the ferry, getting splashed occasionally, but the boat ride was quite smooth.
Landing at Innisheer, we rented bicycles and set off to explore. The first interesting sight was a burial mound from 2,000 BC. The road curved around this short rounded mound with grass growing on the top of it. We saw an old graveyard on a hill and headed that direction. There were many stones from the mid 1800s, and some newer stones too. The grave stones are upright Celtic crosses, beautifully carved, some with Gaelic inscriptions. The cemetery is on a hill that has built up around a ruined church from the 10th century. The church was started by St. Coamhan, patron saint of the Aran islands, and he is buried in a small chapel there in the cemetary.
Next we walked the bikes up a steep hill to O'Brien's castle, built in the 1400s. Much of the castle has been filled in or gated off so that you can't explore it, but the bit we could enter was full of enchantment – it was so easy to gaze into a gated-off hall and picture medieval people there, celebrating a banquet or huddled together for protection against an enemy siege.
Near the castle was a signal tower used in the Napoleonic wars.
We rode all over the island on rocky paved roads. The homes are all close together near the dock, but the rest of the island is covered with small rocky fields fenced by stone walls, containing cows and sheep and potato fields and wildflowers. The bicycle renting people gave us a small map of the island, but it only showed about one-fifth of the roads, so we got a little lost and saw a bit more of the island than we had planned to. I don't regret this at all – in fact I'd like to spend several weeks on Inisheer.
We had tea and sandwiches (cheese and chutney) and porter bread at a charming tea room, then kept riding. We saw another very rocky beach, and an 8th century church called Cill Ghobnait. One of the shops we visited had an enjoyable cd playing. The artist was Lasairfhíona, a woman from the Aran Islands. (Her website is http://www.flameofwine.com/, and I ordered her cd after we came home.) After a bit more riding, we returned the bikes and got “ice burgers” (ice cream sandwiches).
We took the ferry back to Doolin, and had dinner at Fitz's Pub. This is a much newer pub than O'Connor's, with very little ambiance. I think it's a pub for American yuppies rather than for local people. I tried their fish chowder, which was nice. I preferred O'Connor's version, but it was fun to try different interpretations of this apparently common dish.
Near Fitz's was a jewelry shop. I chose a silver Celtic bangle bracelet to commemorate our anniversary and our trip.
Back at Lane Lodge we relaxed for a moment and took an unintentional nap, awaking at 10 p.m. We could hear music coming from O'Connor's. M identified the sound of a bodrahn drum so he headed out to hear the celtic musicians. I stayed in our room to do a little writing, slightly interrupted by the arrival of the biggest bumblebee I've ever seen. It took a nap in our ceiling lamp until M returned and dumped it out the window in a paper cup (which he retrieved from Theresa's back yard the next morning).
6/07/2007
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