Ireland, Day Seven: Galway

On Friday we took a day off from vacation and hung around Galway. Off and on all day we watched this orange cat and his friend, a black & white cat, hang out in the back yard.

Amazingly, Marian Keyes had a new book come out in Ireland and the UK the VERY DAY we arrived in Galway. Buying this book was a top priority. It doesn't have a release date in the United States yet that I can find, so I'm like a super VIP American.

We went to Dough Brothers pizza for lunch.

And wandered all around town. This day in Galway was the first day of brief periods of rain alternating immediately with sunshine, a pattern that would continue for the rest of the trip and I think might be the norm on the west coast of Ireland.

We found a great bookshop! This is not where I bought the Marian Keyes. Vacation means you can go to two bookstores in one day.

The national hurling championship happened the first weekend we were in Ireland (we're still not sure what hurling is) and the national football championship was right after we left. There was a lot of county pride for their teams everywhere we went.

We popped into the Galway Cathedral which was only built in the 1960s. Rick says it is "the last great stone cathedral built in Europe." It looked pretty cool.

This is the Spanish Arch, one of the last remaining fragments of Galway's old medieval walls.

We sat in this park for a while watching a guy play soccer with his dog. The dog was INCREDIBLE at playing soccer.

We also got our laundry done by an elderly Irish woman at this place. She said, "McClure, is it? What kind of a name is that, then? Northern Ireland?" and I said, "It's Scottish," and she said, "Ahhhh, Scottish. I went to Scotland once, on the boat."

For dinner we went to McSwiggan's, a highly recommended place that happened to be just down the street from our apartment. There is a pub downstairs and a nicer restaurant upstairs, with lots of little rooms and stairways and a tree in the middle.

In addition to our entrees they also brought a side of vegetables and also a side of chips. We ate so many freaking chips on this trip.

Ben had washed our hike-ruined shoes when we arrived in Galway, but despite stuffing them with newspaper and changing it throughout the day, they were still wet. Fortunately we had an oven. I was a little worried about this plan but it all worked out fine. Fresh dry shoes!