Aren Islands.

For our final Saint Mary's trip we went to the Aren Islands for the weekend! We rode the bus all the way to Doolin, which is near Galway, stayed the night in a hostel that we basically filled entirely with Smic Chicks, and began the next morning at the Cliffs of Moher. Those of you following the blog will remember that I have already seen the cliffs with my family. However, you will also observe that these pictures are a bit different because of 1.) a lack of parental supervision,
and 2.) peer pressure.

On the way to the Cliffs we stopped at this monument of sorts. I asked our bus driver Eugene where we were. "It's a Megalithic Tomb!" he said enthusiastically.
"It's...a what?"
"It's a big pile of rocks."

And here are the cliffs. As you can see it was a bit cloudier on this particular day.

Me looking over the edge.

Me and Meagan.

Meagan's Shoes. My Shoes.

This was taken by one of the girls on the other side of the cliffs. You can see me and Meagan, we are the farthest two away with our feet dangling.

After the cliffs we rode the ferry over to the Aren Islands. The ride was about 2 hours. These little huts and houses were all over the island.


This cafe is special because this is one of the places where the movie Leap Year starring Amy Adams was filmed. The majority of this movie, set in Ireland, was filmed here on the Aren Islands. I haven't seen it myself, I'm not much of a romantic comedy fan, but I've heard good things about it.

After we arrived on the island we took a bus to some more cliffs that we had to climb. It was very windy and rainy. It was an incredible view though! The wind, however, was very strong so none of us got very close to the edges of these cliffs.

On our last day on the Island we had the day to ourselves, so Me, Meagan, Kim, and Caitlin (the four of us were sharing a room) rented bikes from a shop next to our hostel. We got them at around noon, and rode them all over the Island. Most of the St. Mary's girls rented bikes at some point in the day, and we ran into a group of them in our travels.

Here is me, Kim, and Meagan taking a break
and enjoying the view:

There were seals all around the island!

Our goal was to find this island, which we passed on the way to the cliffs the previous day. The beach looked perfectly white and the water looked just as blue in the gloomy weather, so we made a mental note to find it during our free day.

We spent a lot of the day on the island enjoying the sun, collecting shells, and playing frisbee.

On our bike ride back we discovered this large clover and profession of love made of rocks that we all
thought was adorable.

This trip was by far the best we've taken. I loved getting closer to the other SMC girls here, and I had an incredible time!