Visiting the Aran Islands in Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way

Give up Paris, the Irish poet W.B. Yeats told fellow writer J.M. Synge, and go to the Aran Islands in order to "express a life that has never found expression".

The budding playwright took the advice and traveled to the Aran Islands off Ireland's West Coast. He returned full of ideas, incorporating island ways and dialect into works such as his lyrical play, Riders to the Sea.

Things have changed a bit since Synge made his pilgrimage in 1898, but even today this rocky outpost in Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way remains a place to find respite from modern life and move to a simpler rhythm.