Star Wars for the day

Rico says that, even though all the stars got old, it was still a hell of a ride:

As you can see in the video below, the most eye-popping locale in Star Wars: The Force Awakens turns out to be a very real place; no special set-dressing or digital wizardry, just a gorgeous corner of Earth.
The remote island is a World Heritage site called Skellig Michael, off the coast of Ireland’s County Kerry. It contains the picturesque ruins of a sixth-century monastery.
Of course, Skelling Michael’s role in the film immediately boosted its appeal as a travel hotspot. Tourism Ireland is just fine with this; in fact, it commissioned the video. Since the board wants to protect the beautiful site from damage, a concern local environmentalists raised when shooting began in August 2014, so it capped visitors at about fifteen thousand people a year. The tiny island can only be reached by boat, and then only between May and October. It’s also worth noting that the path up to the monastery ruins is not for the casual wanderer: It’s got nearly seven hundred steps, and two American tourists fell from it to their deaths in 2009.

When the secrecy-obsessed production crew first came to scout the location, they claimed they were making a documentary about Skellig Michael’s puffin population, not, you know, Star Wars. In fact, when the crew celebrated the conclusion of filming back on land at the Bridge Bar in Portmagee, the establishment’s owner didn’t even immediately realize he had one of the original trilogy's heroes sitting there knocking back pints.