County Clare!

Tim and I got back from our first Europe adventure a couple weeks ago. The trip consisted of five days of backpacking in western Ireland (County Clare), a week of visiting friends and family in Germany, and then two days in Dublin. I'm going to try to do this in 3 installments. Hopefully I'll be more successful this time with the "installment" idea.

First of all, our flight had a 3 hours delay. We had been considering taking the extra flight the airline was offering to get people off the plane and $900 voucher to arrive 2 hours later but figured it wasn't worth the risk of losing luggage and the hassle of getting the car late, etc. Then the thunderstorm hit Charlotte and we sat in the airport for an extra hour and a half, and then in the plane for an hour and a half and should have taken the extra flight. Hind sight. In any case, we finally got there and picked up the rental car. Driving on the wrong side of the car and wrong side of the road was WEIRD! But Tim did great!

We took all day driving across the country, stopping every few hours to stretch our legs, drink a coffee to fight the jet lag, and look around whatever city we were in. We stopped in Tullamore (famous for their Tullamore D.E.W. whiskey), Birr, and Ennis before arriving in Lehinch, a coastal surfing town that served as our home base. 

view of the Atlantic from our hostel in Lehinch

Starting our hike the next day was very exciting! We did about 9 miles + 2 uphill both ways and out of the way to stop at the Clare Jam Shop - definitely worth it! We were greeted with some great views of the countryside:

Cows and fog!

found a castle:

Doonnagore Castle

And purchased some lunch at the Clare Jam Shop: Guinness Mustard, Strawberry Jam, Marmelade, and Blackberry and Port Jam.

Aillie River Hostel

The end of the day brought us to Doolin, where we stayed in what was my favorite hostel of the whole trip, the Aillie River Hostel. We stayed here overnight before we took a ferry the next day to the Aran Islands.

Day 2 enjoying Doolin

Day 3 we got on the ferry to head to the Aran Islands - the waves were huge! 12-15 feet high and boy did we get wet! But we were also some of the lucky few who did not get seasick. Below is Tim in his rain suit being blown around the boat. I tried to take more photos, but really needed both hands to hold on. It was pretty terrifying, but what an adventure. Whew.

 The weather once we got the Islands was beautiful! We rented bikes and began exploring. The first stop was the Seven Churches - ruins of literally seven churches built between the 8th and 12th centuries all in the same area. It also has a lot of graves and it was interesting to see gravestones from the 1500s right next to ones from 1990. We were on Inis Mor (pronounced Inish more), the largest of the three Aran Islands. There are about 900 residents who live there year round.

 The next stop on our bike tour was the old fort. It was built, LITERALLY, on the edge of this crazy cliff and there were no guard rails or anything to stop you from falling off. I took this series of pictures - we crawled the last few feet to the edge to be sure there were no untimely deaths. It really felt like we were standing/laying on the end of the world.

Yikes! We had another adventure trying to find the "Worm Hole." This is a naturally occurring hole cut in the rock on the south side of the island. It was rather difficult to find. We took some wrong turns and eventually found some red arrows painted on the rocks that guided the way - somewhat. Just like being out on the edge of the fort hanging off the cliff, the Worm Hole reminded me how powerful nature is. 

We also saw the smallest church in the world (see below) and another graveyard on the island. There were a couple people who served in the U.S. army buried there as well as the guy who starred in the movie "The Man of Aran" from the 1960s? 70s? way back when. 

From there, we headed back to the mainland on a much calmer boat ride. We could actually see the other two islands and I got sunburned (again). 

The hike that afternoon took us to Lisdoonvarna, where we stopped at our first Irish microbrewery, The Roadside Tavern, and enjoyed the three beers brewed there (black, red, and pale). They also had some of the best food of the trip! 

Our final day of hiking was the longest and it rained for the entire four and a half hours back to Lehinch. We hurt all over and spent the afternoon sitting in our room exchanging foot massages.  

The next day, we had a flight to Germany but first, stopped in Galway to check out the city for a couple hours before we needed to be back in Dublin. Galway exceeded both our expectations, who knows how much the weather accounted for that after our hell-hike. 

Galway

I'll pick back up here to share our adventures in Germany!