Day 6 - Galway Bay

Early the next morning while Tom was showering and I was still asleep there was a tiny knock on our door. Thinking it was one of my girls, I opened it to find a young man standing there. He was as shocked as I was and quickly apologized. He was at the wrong room. I shrugged and climbed back into bed.

This B&B asked us to write down a time for breakfast the night before and so we chose 9:00 so that we could have some extra sleep. It was well worth it. I had porridge for breakfast with muesli and milk and that filled me up so much I had a hard time eating my next course of eggs and toast. The Irish eat very heartily in the morning and doing so filled us up until about 4:00 pm each day. Tom had ordered the traditional Irish breakfast and lo and behold it had black and white pudding. He did eat about as much as I had mustered. I smiled at the young man who had awakened me. He and his family were eating next to us. I think they were from Germany.

The husband did the serving of our breakfast and he was the opposite of his wife. He chatted with us and spent quite some time telling us the history of the village and discussing marathons with Tom. He was the one who saw us off, although his wife did come out after Tom knocked on her door. 

We set off for Galway, Ireland to spend most of the day. Our B&B was two hours from there in Mullingar, but that didn't even warrant a paragraph in the tourist book. Mary Anne wanted to see the Galway Bay, and I was interested in another castle there so off we went.  The roads were once again twisty and dangerous, and Darcy was the one this time that felt car sick from all the curves and bumps. 

It was a beautiful drive, and again I attempted photos out the window. It was quite annoying that so many pictures were lost because Tom was too keen on his driving, but then again I wasn't behind the wheel driving on the left side in a different country. And my pictures didn't turn out so badly either.

Galway was not at all what I pictured from our drive and from the description in the Ireland book. It was a busy city full of colleges, churches, and tourism. We parked the car down a cul de sac across from the river in front of a house and in front  of this:

These were all along the waterways in Galway just in case, as in some parts of the river people fish for fresh salmon. Madison saw some of them where signs were posted that said, "Steal this ring, steal a life". The retired lifeguard side of me silently cheered at these little gems. 

We walked across the bridge to Galway Cathedral. In the 1800's the land, directly across from the courthouse, had once housed a large prison and several houses for the warden and groundsman and other employees. Found guilty, the convicts would be led out of the courthouse, marched across the bridge, and housed in the prison. Over the years the diocese saved and bequeathed money for a church to be built in Galway. When enough had been raised they looked for land to build it and it was decided that the prison was not only the largest land, but was in the center of the city. The Galway Country Council moved the prisoners to neighboring prisons, demolished the prison, and gave the church the land for practically nothing. Building began in 1958. 

The building is made from Galway limestone from the quarries. The floor is marble. The seats are mahogany from West Africa and the barrel vaulted ceiling is made from western red cedar from America. The dome, in the Renaissance style, is made of copper that has since turned green from the elements, but serves as the canopy for the Sanctuary. The Cathedral was completed in August 1965. It was truly a magnificent structure. 

From the Cathedral we walked to Erye Center and climbed a double decker tour bus that took us through the entire city in an hour. We started out in the sun, but as we moved along the coast we got some spitting and a lot of wind so that we had to put on jackets.  The tour bus driver was a hoot with his spiel in his Irish brogue. Every sentence ended with him saying, "yea" as if we were asking him if what he was saying was true. 

After the bus we walked the pedestrian strip and shopped for souvenirs. It was a very touristy spot with artists and musicians working the streets for money. We got coffee and pastries to end our visit and hiked back to the car for the two hour drive to out next location. 

It was a long drive to Mullingar. Some slept. Some read. Some texted. Mostly I tried to blog which entailed typing everything in my IPad to post in blogger later in the room. Mary Anne gave me this great journal for Christmas and I brought it along, but the ups and downs and turns of the road made it too hard and most of it is illegible. 

We arrived in Mullingar at our normal dusk time. It was a beautiful country house tucked behind a stone wall in this tiny city. Before we arrived we stopped for gas. While Tom pumped that I kept hearing this booming beat coming from somewhere I couldn't pinpoint. We left there and our GPS took us to a location up the road that didn't look like a bed and breakfast. Tom pulled into the driveway and stopped, tired of all of our backseat/front seat driving I'm sure. He turned the car off and immediately asked, "What's that noise?"

Thinking it was the same noise I had heard at the gas station, albeit quieter since we were across the street, I shooed him up to the house to make sure we were in the right spot. He was standing outside the house talking through the window when the noise he had commented on registered with the rest of us. It was a buzzing sound and it seemed to be coming from the hood of the car. Tom returned and we suggested he turn this knob and that knob, but we could not locate the noise. Irritated, Tom decided it was a blower in the car and he followed the instructions he had gotten down the street to our B&B.

The B&B seemed out of place in his tiny town. It was almost an estate house set on a tiny piece of property. The woman was super friendly and welcomed us the way the last place had not. We were all a bit out of it, our minds on the noise in the car and tired from our day. She was showing us our rooms when suddenly Tom started laughing. He was at the rear of our line holding Mary Anne's carry on bag which he had unloaded from the car. From deep in the depths of the bag was a buzzing noise. It turned out to be her electric toothbrush. Once again we were off on a laughing fit. 

The proprietor was delighted we were there and very disappointed to learn we would be leaving before breakfast. We were the only guests there. She showed us to our rooms and then we all sat in the lounge and talked. Her daughter had lived in Florida for one year and had taught there. She told us her daughter had loved the state, but wished there had been more young people around. We laughed at that. She eventually sent us on our way to downtown for dinner in a pub. 

Mary Anne finally tried Irish coffee, something she had been talking about getting for the past two days. As it was our last night she ordered one. She liked it so much she made us all try it. Darcy and Madison were not fans. 

As we did every night we made our way back to the B&B and fell into bed. Tomorrow we would be up early as we had to drive back to Dublin to catch our plane to Scotland. I hated leaving Ireland. I really enjoyed the country and have decided I will retire here for the summer months.