G'Day from the Galway Girls

Today was a quiet-ish day with only one pit stop on the way to Galway from Killarney. We hit the road after a night in a very warm room (which at least helped the washing dry a little).  We went through Adare (a small village) which has many thatch roofed cottages.  Needless to say, those who haven't seen them before were ambling slowly across roads and down footpaths without a care in the world. We however, drove straight through.

We headed to Cliffs of Moher today.  This is a very picturesque piece of landscape and what many would think of when they think of Ireland. The grass is green, the cliffs are prominent and the breeze was beautiful. The cliffs are primarily made of sandstone and shale. We were promised scones at the cafe by Carries sister (Emma) and they didn't have any. Anyone who knows Carrie, knows that this was not good news.

From the Cliffs of Moher it was time to continue north to Galway. This took a little longer than expected because we got stuck behind a tourist coach on the way which wasn't moving at a cracking pace.  It was however, navigating the winding, narrow roads quite well.  This added probably 30 mins extra onto the trip, but could have been worse, as Gordo pulled a swifty and managed to get in front of it while we were waiting at some traffic lights in a road work zone.

Once past the coach we managed to get into Galway and drop Carrie at the hotel to find out car parking instructions.  This involved Carrie coming back with instructions to a nearby carpark that was subsidised by the hotel. After an "Irish Blockie" we found our way to the carpark. Only the first time we went in there was some confusion as to whether it was indeed the correct carpark. So we left the carpark and did another "Irish Blockie" to find that it was the correct place and tried again.

Once we parked the car (finally), we dumped our stuff, moved the room around to organise the Chinese laundry again and headed off for a walking tour of Galway. On the tour we learnt about the 14 tribes of Galway.  The tribes were prominent merchant families who dominated the city's life form the 13th to the 19th centuries. Galway was not settled by vikings like a lot of other places in Ireland including Dublin. We learnt that JFK visited Galway not long before he was assassinated and managed to draw a crowd of 100,000 people in a town that usually only has about 85,000. All these people crammed  into Eyre Square to come and see him.  JFK's great grandparents on both sides all emigrated to Boston from Ireland. 

While on the walking tour we were shown a clock that was on the face of one of the buildings and below this it said "Dublin time."  Dublin time on this clock was set to be 25mins and 21secs ahead of Galway time. Obviously this is no longer the case due to standardisation of time zones in countries but its an interesting piece of history to see.

There is a castle in the middle of the main pedestrian thoroughfare of Galway which is called Lynch (one of the 14 tribes) Castle. The Lynches were one of the prominent tribes.

There is currently a mass of tourists in Galway (most of whom are Americans). They are all dressed in either Iowa state or K-state (Kansas) merchandise.  This is due to an exhibition college NFL game being held in Dublin this coming weekend. There are banners hung in the streets, there are welcome signs in the hotels and Americans everywhere.  As the Irish are trying to promote the game more in Ireland.

After our tour finished it was time to head back to the hotel for a jumper and off to dinner. Carrie finally managed a beef and Guinness stew which was great and did not disappoint.  We really wanted to share a piece of sticky toffeee pudding for dessert but it was too bloody hot in the pub so we headed for an iceream instead.  We tried an Irish brown bread flavour, which is soda bread which has sugar placed on top and then caramelised in the oven for 8 hours. This is then broken up into tiny pieces and put into the ice cream.  It was delicious. We also noticed while we were at dinner, that Galway do things a little differently. Check out the specials menu and see if you can find what we are talking about. We had a little chuckle.

That's about it from us for today. We will catch you tomorrow.  Stay in touch to see if they let us into Northern Ireland.