The sweet sounds of Counties Clare and Galway

The rocks of the Burren
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I'm currently spending my last day in Galway, before heading back to Dublin tomorrow. Galway itself has pretty much no sights to see, but lots of pubs, so there's not a heap to do in the city itself during the daytime. It's raining here today, so I'm just chilling out and relaxing a bit.

Kind of like I did in Ennis -- I'd been running around so much that I needed a bit of non-sightseeing time. Only thing to see there really is the Ennis Friary, the ruins of an old monastry, right in the heart of town. Kept me occupied for all of about 15 minutes. Had a bit excitement the second evening I was there, though: I'd gone to a pub with a couple of American girls I met at the hostel, we'd just walked in the door, found a nook to perch in, and a woman -- not sure if she was a local or a tourist -- started yelling at the bar. I think she'd got cut off, which she responded to by throwing some ice at the barmaid. She was quickly ejected, there was some yelling and screaming outside, then the sound of breaking glass, she'd thrown a rock or something through the window. Luckily, the window was over the only empty bench in the pub, so no-one was hurt. The weird thing is that this was a rough pub at all -- it was a very cosy, homely sort of place; we'd actually gone there to listen to some traditional Irish music.

Window, Ennis Friary
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This might sound a bit daggy, but it's a big thing in Ireland, particularly in the west here in Clare and Galway. Lots of pubs host what they call music "sessions", often every night at a certain time. The musicians don't perform on a stage but sitting down around a table. By far the best session I've seen was yesterday, out on Inis Mor, one of the Aran Islands off the coast, when I'd gone for a quiet pint with Matt and Sally, an Aussie couple I keep running into, while killing a few hours before the ferry returned to the mainland. This was just four guys sitting around, taking turns to take the lead, with the others each taking there cue from him. It was wonderful because they were all excellent musicians and it felt very spontaneous, they were doing it purely out of enjoyment, whereas from what I've seen some of the arranged sessions have a tendency to feel a bit formulaic and like they are doing the same tune over and over.

My hostel in Ennis. I stayed in the room with the bay window poking out over the river.
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From Ennis, I headed north to Doolin, possibly the busiest 200-person town in the world. There's nothing there but a few pubs and hostels, but it's on the main tourist route (and the coach tour route), because it's the closest town to the Cliffs of Moher. The cliffs, which are 200 metres high and sheer vertical, were amazing, but I had to fight the crowds a little. I took a ride down there, then intended to head up through the Burren, a famously rocky patch of the country, but made a few miscalulations and only saw a little of it in a huge, all day ride. Then I got stuck a second night in Doolin, which I didn't plan on, becuase I misread the bus timetable (Irish buses are an absolute nightmare). Went to bed very tired that night.

Cliffs of Moher
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The Aran Islands trip is the main thing I've done here in Galway. After a very rocky ferry ride, which most people on board treated as a substitute theme-park ride, I did a short tour around the Island, which is all rough limestone sticking up through very shallow soil. The chief tour attaction is Dun Aengus, a 2500-year-old fort built right on the side of 100-metre cliffs. It's basically several semi-circular rings of stone, so there's not much to the fort itself that's too impressive, but the views are great. The cliffs are sheer straight down to the water, topped by a flat platform of rock, and there are no barriers or railings, so you can lie flat on the ground, and crawl to the edge, stick your head out and look straight down. The wind comes striaght up the cliffs and hits you right in the face. Good fun, but the music afterwards was the undoubted highlight of the day.

Cliffs of Moher
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My photos of the fort don't quite give a good sense of what it it exactly, so this is a link to site with an arial shot that captures it better: http://www.galway.net/galwayguide/showyp.shtml?id=4082