Aran Islands off Ireland first tour

Off the west coast of Galway are the Aran Islands, a chain of three small islands.  Our first tour was to Inis Mor, the largest of the three.  First a 40 min bus ride to the ferry docks. then a ferry took us from Galway Bay to Inis Mor.  The island is 9 miles long and 2 miles wide made of barren limestone rock, population about 800.  It is one of the rockiest places I've ever seen.  The fields are cleared by stacking the rocks into low fences, and there are millions of them.  Everywhere you look, dark green fields surrounded by rock fences.  The older fences are covered in vines and low shrubs. They raise sheep and cattle.  We stopped at Dun Aonghasa for a couple of hours, and walked up (very up) to the top of the cliffs where a spectaclar semi circular celtic stone fort sits overlooking the Atlantis.  It's made of black stacked stones.  The cliffs are even more spectacular, over 300 feet high, rugged, beautiful.  There are no fences or baricades to block a person at the edge of the cliffs, so we edged our way to a safe distance and watched the surf break against the cliffs. It was breathtaking.  This fort is thought to be one of the oldest in Ireland, and was probably built in a D shape closer to the cliffs, but that part has fallen into the sea.  It's now a huge half circle of dry stones, with stairs, walkways and an open arena in the center.  Around the back side are concentric circles of stacked stone.  Very impressive and worth the strenous climb up there.  We also saw from a distance the Lighthouse.  And the Seven Churches ruins although there are only two churches with partial walls still standing.  We think churches were built on the ruins of other churches, seven in all.  Gaelic or Irish is still spoken here, and all signs are in both Gaelic and English.  In fact, in all of Ireland, all signs are in both languages, and all public announcements on the trains are in both languages.  It's not a Latin based language, and it's not intuitive. Almost none of the words in English come from Gaelic.  People come to the islands to study the Irish language, and there are summer schools just for that purpose.  At the bus stop to return to the ferry are several nice shops, and the one with stone carvings was visited by Aidan Quinn an hour or so before we got there.  We looked for him on the 5PM ferry, but either he had an excellent disguise or he took the puddle jumper for 49 Euro back to the mainland.  Weather was beautiful, no rain, dramatic clouds over the ocean, bright sunlight.