peaceful inishmore

we've been having a lovely time on inishmore island, off the coast of western ireland. we're staying at the kilronan hostel right by the ferry dock. only 800 people live on this island year round, so it is quite quaint and quiet, with thousands of stone fences everywhere, weaving through the property, housing cows and some horses and some donkeys. in the summer, as many as 1000-2000 tourists come here per day, but now it is slow (which is nice!) yesterday we rented bikes and rode along the coastline to don aonghasa, a 2000 year old irish stone fort that is built in semi-circles on the edge of a cliff. we laid down on the rock with our heads peaking over, so far to the windy ocean below! the land here is so full of limestone and rock, interspersed with the irish green grass, some little dandelions and daisies. the weather has been cloudy, but the fog lifted when we were at the cliffs and we could see across the island.

last night we went out to a hotel pub nearby with our new friends brian from indiana and maren from germany. two men were playing music (accordian and bouzouki) and singing traditional irish tunes. on this island, many people still speak irish as their first language, and some of the songs were in gaelic. we drank more guinness and brian brought his fiddle, which he played with the other guys. it was so much fun! two irish men, who were also visitors, kept us entertained....one tapped his fingers and opened his arms wide to a recognized song, or played two spoons on his lap, or sang along with the song or in between songs. the other, our new friend toddy, shared some beautiful and heart wrenching poetry with carson and i at the end, and told us about his life and how he wants to move to this island to learn his language and stay here until he does. it was such an honor to be in this cozy warm place with community here, even if many are visiting americans (like in our hostel, so many americans!) we are heading back to galway on the 5:00 ferry tonight....we are at a bit of a standstill on our trip, as europe is so expensive....even as we try to live frugally, it's still adding up much more quickly than we'd thought. so we are not quite sure what's next. we'll be in galway for a couple more nights....on tuesday we went to the quays, and saw AMAZING irish music, guitar/fiddle/mandolin/bodhran drum. we also ended up in a corner with two other people from portland, randomly!


my mom posted some more photos from our trip to nashville, of the city and the wedding and such, they can be found at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mcconnr/NashvilleTrip

meanwhile, we'll be figuring out where we are going to next, and trying to apply for an india visa while we're abroad (something, we now realize, we should've figured out when we were back in the US! oh well....the adventure continues!