Aran Islands, Sweaters and Stag Parties

Saturday was a great morning for sleeping in.  We had a great long shlep, and I slept off my horrible night with some lazing and being too hot and too cold and too uncomfortable.  I finally rolled out of bed around 10:30, in preparation for our departure for the Aran Islands at hhaaaaapasht, generally stiff and still feeling quite queasy.  The shower helped, and brushing your teeth always makes you feel better, but I was certainly not repaired.  I made it down stairs, resolved to drink water often.  I bought a bottle in the hostel, and met everyone at the bus downstairs.

I said hello to Gabriel, and he said hello to me, and I took my seat on the bus.  I was meant to go for a walk with Lauren down to the Prom at nine, but I had to roam around the hostel looking like hell trying to find her and tell her that I wasn't going.  She was fairly sympathetic, and very kindly sat next to me on the bus while we rode to the ferry.  I put my head against the head rest in front of me for most of the ride, which did seem to help, and I wore my face mask because it is sort of comforting to breath my own air.  It's like the paper bag thing when you are hyperventilating.

It was incredibly brisk at the dock for the ferry, and I was glad that I had been sent upstairs for a sweater and my windbreaker.  The ferry was passenger only, so poor Gabriel did not get to go to the islands with us.  As are most things with Leta, she rushed us out the door just to hurry up and wait at the dock for the boat.  Better us waiting for our appointed ferry than waiting for the next one to turn up, I suppose.

I would tell you more about the ferry ride, but I must confess, it was glassy smooth water, and an hour long ride out to the island, and I slept most of it.  By the time we pulled into the island, I genuinely felt rejuvinated, despite spending much of the time very barely asleep and trying to keep my mouth closed.

If it was chilly on the dock on the mainland side, it was positively freezing on the Aran island side.  Leta had asked who wanted to bike and who wanted to take a van, and I was certainly not repeating my horrendous performance on the bicycles by going out while feeling terrible, so I was taking the van.  This ended up being a fabulous decision.  Since it was just Leta, Mark and I, she hired Tony the cart driver, and his poor animal Jimmy to drive us.  Tony speaks much better Irish than English, thus, he called me Sarah from Alaska (because Seattle is Alaska?), and I think honestly he was this close to carrying me off into the wild hills of Aran to keep me forever.  He had snow white hair and a face whipped by age, but he had a certain puckish quality that made him spunky in his gnarled ways.  But, like Gabriel, he was good natured and informative, and offered up plenty of blarney with his facts.

The bikers made it to the fort before we did, but I was far more informed.  Tony let me ride beside him in the front seat, and regaled me with all sorts of commentary.  Apparently the Aran islands have seen a wave of immigration, especially of Poles and Filipinos.  (This became certainly evident when we arrived at the fort and cafe.)  There once were sheep on the island, but there are no more, because, as Tony says, the young kids get on the Googles instead of tending to the sheep.  They do however have goats, and a cheese making farm, and lots of cattle, which spend all their time out of doors even in the winter, and are very tough cattle.  Aran Island is made of the same stone as The Burren, and there is no naturally occuring top soil.  All the grass lands have been constructed from years of hauling the seaweed off the coast and spreading it to rot on the land until it turns to compost, mixing it with sand, and planting things in that.  Tony said that a farmer will lay out seaweed over his potato fields three weeks before he plants the potatoes.  He also claims no change to flavor, but that Aran potatoes are the healthiest and heartiest potatoes in Ireland.

There are no naturally occurring predators on the island, and only rabbits and pheasants are native.  We saw two pheasant on our way back to the dock.  I could honestly count the animals on the pair of my hands: cattle, goats, horses, rabbits, pheasants, crows and black birds.  That is the extent of the fauna on Aran.  Our route took us along the brisk seashore ("Do you like the ocean air, Sarah dear?  Are you near the sea in Alaska, Sarah?"  "Sarah, you won't get color from the sun, here on the island, the color in your cheeks will be from the wind!  It's good for the body, that sea air.  Are you near the ocean in Alaska, Sarah?"  "What is Christmas like at home Sarah dear?  Oh!  You have Thanksgiving in Alaska, that must be quite the holiday!  Thanksgiving and Christmas!  Oh how lovely Sarah dear.").  It was fabulously beautiful, bleak and austere, but in a formidable way.  Tony spoke Irish to everyone who passed, and quite often I think he knew that the other driver couldn't hear him, but he talked anyway, I think to hear the sound of his own voice.  He said that everyone on the island lives and tills the same land of the last six or eight generations, and that each family has 60 or 70 acres of land.  The poor place is completely made of rock, so, of course, there were stone walls crawling all over the island.

Poor Jimmy, the horse, poor old Jimmy dear was constantly being chided to go faster, and the poor old boy was sweaty and tired when we got him.  I mean no offense to Leta or Mark when I say that poor Jimmy was toting quite a load with all four of us together on that cart.  Presently we arrived at the visitor center, to take the trail up to the fort.  I have already forgotten the name of the fort, of course, but it was absolutely astounding.  It was good that I made it up at the time I did, because someone had brought a UW flag, and we were taking a group picture.  I ran up to meet them, and thus, am in the center of the picture, sitting on the cliff edge (sorry mom).  We are entering our group pictures into a competition at UW when we return, and I hope that we win, and I hope that picture does it.  It was a great shot of us all together, showing our Huskie pride.  Nearly everyone wore purple, grey or black, and so we all matched very well.

After that, we perused the fort for a while, and everyone terrified me by getting close to the cliff edge.  (Joke's on you people, the aforementioned cliff edge was more like the edge of one rock in the middle of an otherwise non-cliffy section of the hillside.  So, it looks cliffy, but it is not.  Don't worry mom!)  Lindsay, Michael and I did lay down on the edge of the cliff and take a fabulously scary cliff-edge selfie, and this one was a legit cliff edge, but we layed down on our stomachs, and our heads can't just fall off, after all.

Mark and I had to hoof it back to the cart, to make it back to the dock in time for the boat at 5.  On the ride back, we had a stiff headwind, and I wish I had gotten a picture of poor Leta, with her hood pulled up tight around her face, and a blanket up to her chin.  It was very stiff, but, as Tony says, it puts good color in my cheeks, and it is good for the body.  I did feel great by the time we got to the Aran sweater shop near the dock.  As soon as I walked in, and laid eyes on this wonderful forest green light Aran sweater, I knew I wanted it, and good God, it was only 50 euro.  I pretended to peruse the other sweaters, but this was the one.  I bought it, and found that Leta and Mark had left me, so I marched my way down to the dock.  I then discovered that everyone was back at the pub I had already walked past, so I walked back there, and immediately turned around to come back to the dock with everyone else.  There was a lovely border collie, and I petted him each time I past.  He had a lovely silky head.

I wrote a bit on the boat back, and then slept for a while with my sweater for a pillow, and woke up with cables imprinted on my face.

We had a reservation at a Thai restaurant in Galway, which was actually both fancy and delicious.  I have been told that in Ireland they only use paper napkins, but I have come across a few fabric napkins while I have been here, and this was one of those places.  I ate mostly rice, and a spring roll that Leta very graciously gave me, and some vegetable spring rolls and lots of water.  I was still eating cautiously of course.

The Huskie game was on that night, and Gabriel had connected us with a pub on shop street that would live stream the game for us, and had already set up the computers and cables and everything for us to have a private viewing room with our own bar.  Evalina (who was having much the same symptoms as I was having) and I were not feeling up to going to the game, and stayed in.  This became it's own adventure for me, and while I didn't really stay in, it was absolutely worth it.

Nextdoor to my room was a stag party, and they were assembled in the hall, accosting every one of our girls as they were collecting to go watch the game.  There was one particularly drunk, particularly large, particularly hairy, particularly shirtless man named Peter was sort of spearheading the accosting.  Everyone else was sort of watching to hear what he had to say.  Well, I got sucked into talking with them.  There were a few ones who seemed ok, James, Connor, and a few others whose names I didn't catch.  They desperately wanted me to go out with them, and they wanted Evalina to go out too.  They were convinced that she just needed some hot whiskey and she would be alright.  Well, we did some chatting, and I shook them for 20 minutes, but we still didn't want to go out when they returned.  The large hairy giant (the chest hair was certainly not helping the bald spot on the top of his head...) was desperate for a cuddle, and basically broke into our room and tried to get into my bed.  His friends hauled him out, and Evalina and I went down to the common area to socialize for a while.

I spent much of the night talking to James, who is apparently the only Irishman ever to not drink.  He is career military in Dublin, and we had an exhaustive conversation on politics, world affairs, the culture of being Irish, humor (his humor was nearly identical to mine.  I am convinced that I should have been all Irish.  Their humor is biting, just this side of being mean, but always witty, and undeniably intelligent.), Ireland now and then, America and Ireland now and then, and many other sundry topics.  Eventually he felt bad that he (the best man, after all) had been left at the hostel while everyone else took the parrot/groom out to drink.  He walked me back to my room, and departed for his stag party.  His name was James O'Hara, and honestly, I couldn't have imagined a better Irishman with whom to make friends.  (He was at one point getting rather close to me, so I let him know that I have a boyfriend at home, and it is a mark that we might actually be good friends that we still talked quite pleasantly for another hour after that, if with slightly more distance between us.)