Ireland pt. 4: Inishmore, Doolin, Bunratty Castle, and more Dublin

 

One of our top experiences from the whole trip was our visit to Inishmore in the Aran Islands. We took a ferry over from Doolin and spent the day exploring on E-bikes. The weather didn't look promising for the day, but we were happy we got to go at all. It was extremely windy that day, so the boat ride made a lot of passengers on our boat sick. We felt fine though and lucked out with no rain for the day even though we thought it would be pouring on us all day! It was seriously incredible. The wind made it pretty crazy, but we loved it. We road all around the island and loved exploring the ruins.

I think this is the view from Dun Aengus.

And I think this is the wormhole that's naturally formed. They did a big diving competition here a few years back. It was hard to find and we basically wandered through a field til we found it.

We literally almost missed our boat ride back because we thought we'd have time to visit the black fort ruins. We were panicking and barely made it back in time.

We ended up with an awkward amount of time left that night stumbled upon this incredible concert in Doolin called "Doolin Music House". (Doolin is famous for being the Irish music capital.) It felt like we'd stumbled into someone's family home evening and felt like the most special thing. These two men grew up in Doolin making music and spent the night playing traditional music for us. Their wives even did some dancing for us and they had some friends visiting from the US that joined in too. 

Just the most beautiful sunset in Doolin.

We wanted to break up the drive from Doolin back to Dublin on our last day, so we stopped at Bunratty Castle. 

We headed back to Dublin for our final evening and visited Christ Church Cathedral. We lucked out big time and they happened to be starting the most gorgeous Evensong concert right as we got there. It was absolutely stunning and felt like such a tender mercy since Cameron and I love choral music like that so much.

The cathedral from the outside

River Liffey in Dublin

Temple Bar area in Dublin. Wild and crazy and fun.

Our hotel in Dublin (Wilder Townhouse) ended up having the most amazing breakfast. If we're ever in Dublin again we have to go back just for the food. (Surprisingly we had so much great food on this trip! We really enjoyed every single meal.) We absolutely fell in love with Ireland and definitely want to go back! The most magical country with beautiful scenery, kind people, and delicious food.