Grey Sky Eyes

What a weekend. I honestly don't know where to begin in this story, so I guess I'll start at the beginning and move towards the end? Sure, lets do that.
On Friday, right around when I wrote my last post a group of five of us booked an overnight trip to the Aran Islands. Look below to see where they are :)

It's a 45 minute bus ride and then a 45 minute ferry ride to get to the biggest island, Inis Mor, which is the one we chose to travel to. Our booking process was really easy, and for 35 euros we had the bus travel, the ferry rides, and a night at a hostel. Great deal. But then I went to let everyone else in my API family know what we were doing and suggested they come along. Well, somehow not everyone booked their tickets the night before and so when we met bright and early on Saturday, they had to rush over to the ferry office to do so. To make a long story short, and attempt not to make it seem like poor planning, the ferry office was chaotic and the company was horribly organized. It ended up that only half of us made it on the 10 o'clock ferry to the island and the other half had to take the one at noon.
When we arrived we decided that the best way to see the island (which is 9 miles long and 2 miles wide) was by renting bikes, so a few of us got bikes and went exploring. Here are the pictures from the morning

 

molly and i

 Sorry for the hectic organization, I still have no clue how to organize them on the page.
After the second half of our group got to the island it started misting, but we pushed on and biked about 3/4 of the island along the coast. It was a nice bike, and pretty easy cause we stopped a lot to take pictures. We saw a lot of horses and cows, and stopped to say hi at every one :)

 I met a lot of friends, and it was really cool how friendly all the animals were. The cat that is on the wall ^ became my fast friend and followed me all the way up our hike to see that church. It was sad when we had to leave her.

If you couldn't tell we had some problems with them wanting our rain jackets :) but overall I think everyone enjoyed the bike ride. It's a really gorgeous island.

 

Around  half three we found the rest of our group and Molly and I gave two girls our bikes so they could ride home while we explored on foot. It was around then that it started pouring and the wind picked up. But we were on the other side of the island from our hostel so we kept trekking...cause we're troopers :)

Sarah, Danielle, Molly, Colleen, Brendan and I were walking back towards our hostel and found a really cool lighthouse which was on top of a mountain. 

The wind was pushing against us, so it was nice when we got there. From the top of the tower you could see the entire island, the only problem was the entire island had turned grey and rain covered.

 


After a long walk home in the rain and wind, we found out that Hurricane Katia had crossed the ocean and the Aran Islands were going to get a direct hit with her spin off rain and wind. They were shutting down the ferries and if we didn't catch the 8 o'clock ferry on Sunday morning we would be stuck on the island until Tuesday. That's when we all started feeling a little antsy to get off the island.
I finished my day on Inis Mor with a hot dinner and a little time at one of the three pubs on the island. After crashing around 9, we woke up this morning at 6:30 to make sure we caught the ferry. See the problem was, we had tickets for the 5 o'clock ferry tonight and not for the 8 o'clock one and no one was sure that there would be room for the 15 of us. Luckily there was, and we were home in Gort na Coiribe by 11. I was asleep just moments after that.

I realized this weekend that it's times when my plans are stressful or when life gets hard that it's the hardest to be oceans away from home and I must admit I would love nothing more than to be curled up in my bed at home home right now with a cup of honey lemon tea.

missing the world,
k

Just in case I got stranded I found a nice sturdy shelter