Day 7: Not Yet a "Galway Girl"

I was sad to be leaving Dingle, but looked forward to visiting Galway after hearing so much about it. We had perfect driving conditions: gorgeous weather and little traffic. Since we drove along the same route that we took into the Dingle peninsula the night before, we were able to see the beautiful view that we had missed in the darkness.

Upon leaving the peninsula, the driving was still nice, but consisted more of farms and rolling green fields. When we were about halfway to Galway, we encountered a significant road block. Ahead of us in the road was an entire herd of sheep, being followed by a red truck, at least two individuals on the road, and a sheepdog. Since there was traffic in both lanes, the sheepdog was responsible for herding the sheep from one lane to the next. We enjoyed watching the little sheep butts wag back and forth as they changed lanes. Passing by them, their little heads bobbed by our windows and I was jealous they were on Chad's side or I would have reached out to pet them. The entire incident was a highlight of the trip for me.

The next major city we passed through on the way to Galway was Limerick. We missed the exit to bypass it so we ended up downtown in the middle of rush hour. There's really not that much to say about it except for this analogy: Limerick is the Milwaukee of Ireland. Needless to say we did not stop.

As we reached Galway, night was heavy upon us. After driving through all the small towns of the southeast and west we were in for a rude awakening at the size of Galway. Add in the mass amounts of teenagers walking all over and the numerous one way streets and our intial reaction to Galway was not the idyllic one I had imagined. We finally found a parking spot and got out to search for a bed and breakfast.

After walking a few streets we realized that we would most likely need to stay in a hotel since there were no bed and breakfasts to be seen. Finally, we found the Skeffington Arms Hotel for a seriously reasonable price and checked in. The bad news was that we would need to move our car to a parking ramp and so we trekked our way back to the car. Even more unfortunate, we discovered upon entering the car that we had left our directions to the parking ramp in our new hotel room. So we drove around for nearly an hour searching for the vague notion of where the parking ramp was described to be located. At last, we found what we imagined would have to be the ramp and, even if it wasn't, I could care less at this point.

We walked back in the direction of the hotel and looked for restaurants to eat at. Somehow we were not able to find any in the area except for the one attached to our hotel. So that is where we ate. The food tasted pretty good after not eating all afternoon. Chad had some chicken breast and ham with a hollandaise sauce (aka heart attack on a plate) and I ordered salmon because what else should you really order in Galway. To top it off I had a delicious Bulmer's Iced Cider which was the cider topped with more frozen icy cider. After we finished eating, we walked around the rest of the restaurant because it used to be the hotel and was ornately decorated.

We then found a convenience store to buy a phone card for phoning our families and some post cards. After our purchases, we went back to the hotel room and crashed. The hotel allowed guests to borrow DVDs so after leaving our deposit I returned to the room with "The Apartment". We watched it while sipping hot chocolate and sprawling out on our tremendous bed, which was two double beds pushed together. We enjoyed our evening and hoped that Galway would look different to our fresh eyes in the morning.