The Galway Girls

Sorry for the delay. We've been galavanting girls in Galway for the past two days. 

We made it by train on Saturday afternoon and after plotting on the map how to walk to our hotel and hoping we can find it, we come out to find it's literally backed up against the train station! Impossible to get lost

We wandered to the recommended fish and chips place and had a tasty dinner. 

Later on we went out on the main street and we're overwhelmed by what we encountered - to put it mildly. In every direction we looked we saw stag and hen parties, and these folks go big.  All the hen parties had themes, such as all Disney.  Theoughout the night there were multiple blowup dolls of both genders, blowup penises (penii?), and more drunk people than we could imagine. It felt like we had dropped into the jersey shore of Ireland. Needless to say, without our miniskirts and 5" heels we were underdressed, though it was quite a show. 

Last night, determined to find something a bit more our speed we took the advice of dear old Lon O'Neil ( thanks dad) and walked over to the Crane Bar where we had three hours of amazing local traditional musicians all playing and singing. We'd found our place!! It was everything I imagined from pubs in Ireland including a local gentleman who joined in with stories and poems in between the songs. 

Today (after almost oversleeping!) we went on a tour of Inishmoor, the largest of the Aran Islands. Definitely one of the top things we've done on this trip. Incredible coastlines, Viking forts, and church ruins. On an island that is 18 km long and up to 5km wide there are over 7000 miles of limestone walls.

And! We passed the house that was in the moving Matchmaker - those who know how much I love that movie can imagine how excited I was.

We stuck our feet in the water, felt like home!

Danielle ate berries off the side of the road - raise your hand if you're surprised. No one? That's what I thought. 

We met an amazing woman on our tour who had studied history and archaeology of Ireland and gave us some amazing in depth info and invited us to stay with her the next time we come!!

I probably shouldn't reveal this but if I ever run away I think I might run to this island and stay, did not want to leave at all. This only starts to cover all that we saw today but I'm back at the hotel room exhausted and this will have to do for now. 

One more night in Galway before we head back to Dublin.