Day 8: Inishmore

This Smith family is about to kill me off. We got off the boat this evening and they immediately went to a pub.
 
I napped.
 
We just finished dinner at the hotel and once again The Cousins (as we’ve come to call them) and a few of their hardy spouses and friends are off to another Galway pub or two or three, led by that master pubfinder Eric the Red (his old Norse name). 
 
And where am I? In my room at the Imperial Hotel putting together this blog, that’s where.
 
Incidentally, “Imperial Hotel” is an odd name for an inn in a town and country that is the opposite of imperial-- having been conquered by Vikings, Normans, and English but never having imperial power over anyone else—and often not over itself.
 
But I digress. This is not a history lesson. And tonight it won’t be much of a travel blog, either—just a brief summary of day number 8 of the Smith Cousins Tour of Ireland, 2013. Oh, and some photos.
 
Inishmore is the largest of the three Aran Islands just off of Galway on Ireland’s west coast. We spent the day getting there, walking its very rocky limestone terrain, and getting back. Here you see two prominent features of Inishmore: slab limestone that was formed at the bottom of the sea south of the equator millions of years ago and limestone rock walls. 
If our Inishmore-born-and-raised minibus driver is to believed, there are 3000 miles of rock walls on the 3 mile-long island. That seems an exaggeration, but then again there is an awful lot of ‘em.
Perhaps the most fascinating site on Inishmore is Dun Aengus, described as a “pre-Christian fort, the most magnificent barbaric monument in Europe.” I don’t know that I would say it is magnificent, but it is amazing. What’s equally amazing is that none of us died while making the long steep climb from the island floor to this very high point on the sea—not even those few hardy souls among us who opted out of the 3 mile bus ride to the base of the hill.
 
Below is a photo of a guy hanging sitting on the cliff you see in a previous photo, his legs hanging over the 100 ft. drop into the Atlantic Ocean. Those are definitely not my feet.
 
OK, that’s the end of my report of our day. Now for your viewing pleasure, here are a few random photos of previous days of our adventure.




Oops. On the stained glass window picture, I wrote "Seamas" when I should have written "James."   Our Gaelic speaking guide Batt Burns said that translated from Gaelic, Seamas is James.

AN IRISH BLESSING:
May the sound of happy music, And the lilt of Irish laughter, fill your heart with gladness, that stays forever after.