Connemara!

Well I woke up in time, but we were ten minutes late for the Aran Islands Ferry. It took longer than anticipated to walk there, but there was a nice man standing outside selling tickets to the cliffs of Moher and to Connemara.

He talked to us for a little while, and it turned out the tour was leaving in 20 minutes or so... We were offered discounts so we took both brochures and decided on Connemara. I was planning to see both at some point so it didn't matter to me :)

The driver/tour guide was excellent - after passing by the kayak polo...




His first food and toilet stop was a Costcutters! Just your general convenience/grocery store, so right away I was impressed! I grabbed a latte and away we went:




















here I am! the black sheep of the family!

The Abbey: we had lunch here from the Costcutters :)











The tour was fantastic - I am in a lot more shots here because I was with Sa and Jana - they are a lot of fun :) We got back an hour later than scheduled since nobody on the bus had to catch a train or flight, so that was also very cool.

It was a cooker that day, so we walked around the city after. They had not seen the festivities at the docks yet, so we went and checked them out. Here is the route the boats were taking:


After walking around, we still had time before the big dinner at Zool's. We went to the trusty off license by the Spanish Arches and decided to snack and have a beer. I think everyone else in Galway had the same idea as us, because again this area was packed! I took a picture of across from us by the arches (we usually hung out on the grass peninnsula thing in the middle which is just as busy if not more so) to give you an idea. The city was so alive!




The dinner at Zool's was amazing yet again! There was soooo much Malaysian yummyness that we couldn't finish it all. We all stuffed ourselves to the point where you want to undo a button... I was happy to be in stretchy clothes haha.

We hung out there for a while again, then Zool offered to give us a ride back which was very nice! I was still awake though, so I was dropped off directly on the way to the house to visit Gwilym, the person I'd met on the balcony next door to Zool. We hung out with his friend for a while, then another person came over... turns out they were working on the races which was cool... but then I started falling asleep. Gwilym offered me a spare bedroom and I took it. It was very comfy :)

The next day I was not able to get to Aran Islands because I was up late and didn't stay at the house! I walked home around noon-ish expecting the girls to be gone, but it turns out they slept in too! We all shared the spare room at this point, so we all got ready and went out into the city to look at a few things. They needed to get things organized for leaving soon, so we went to find a luggage storage place etc. We found something, ended up looking in a few shops, walked around, and I think we ended up meeting up Zool and his friend for ice cream near Eyre Square. I was deciding between going to the cliffs of Moher or Aran Islands the next day.

Can't really remember what I did for the evening, probably watched a movie or something.

So I guess we chilled out, and went to bed at a normal type time to get up for the touurrrsss!

Recovery from Shopping Cart Adventures

I was hung over the next day - should have eaten more.

We went to a Malaysian BBQ, which was lovely, but I was feeling quite under the weather, to the point where I could not keep the food down. I was also falling asleep on their back lawn (thankfully it didn't look weird since others were also laying down). It was disappointing I was not able to enjoy the food more, but at least tasted it!

We drove back to the house and it was veg out time. Chee and I finished watching that horror movie, which lead to many other movies. We watched one called the Devil's Chair (extremely violent - loads of gore if you're into that), Sharkwater, and something else maybe? It was a marathon. I was eventually able to eat some food, and Zool dropped by to visit. I was feeling much more normal, and he offered to take me into the city if I wanted to grab some food there! I figured I should be able to get out of the house by now, so I joined him.

I ate a cheeseburger standing on the balcony watching the nightly free concert (yes there was a free concert every night of the Volvo Races festival!) The apartment was right on the docks so we could see everything on the screen plus the huge crowd of people farther away. I was offered a beer after by the balcony neighbors, and after that combo I felt 100% better :)



We chilled out and watched TV with his roommates and friends, until it was getting late-ish. The two Americans had left, but now two German girls were arriving that night and had invited me through Chee to come out on a tour with them the next day, so I had to potentially wake up early...

Because of this I headed back. I talked to them briefly as I got my laptop from the living room (I had a spare bedroom with my own bathroom! so rad!) and found out when they were waking up...

I went to bed with the alarm set ready to rock :)

Galway Sights and Stealing Shopping Carts

Friday I woke up to sunshine. It was surprisingly hot out, hotter than I'd experienced so far in Ireland. I started walking towards the city...





I decided it would be more scenic if I walked along the canal once I was close to the city (and armed with a map now haha) so that's what I did:






I ended up having even more ice cream... and walked over to the docks where the Ocean Races Festivities were all set up! It was massive, although you can't really tell by the pictures there were tents everywhere, boats, beer gardens, everything!





I went into that dome thing in the last picture, and it showed a movie about what the ocean race was.

I had no idea, but the Volvo Ocean Race is really hardcore! Seven boats racing literally around the world, and this year Galway was picked as a stop! The boats stop for two weeks or something in between each leg, and they had come in from Boston. I was impressed - this was way more cool than your average boat race (which is what I though it was at first).

For future reference, the green dragon was the Irish team in the races, so there was lots of paraphernalia floating around, including that giant inflatable one.

Speaking of that thing, I ended up wandering after this to Eyre Square, where I sat down and ate some food I think. I remember sitting there and then this street acrobatics performance started, so I went over and watched some of it.



I had my hula hoops collapsed on my person, so I hoped they didn't recognize what they were...

Luckily they didn't and I escaped. I met up with Chee and friends at Spanish Arches after getting some beer at the off licencse. The hula hoops came out! It was fun! The arches were PACKED!



Finding places to urinate was proving to be an adventure. This is the problem with drinking in the outdoors when there is lots of people around and no bushes to hide in.
Eventually, the hoops were collapsed and we went to a bar. Chee showed us some rad puzzle tricks that I really wish I remembered (like how do you make this into this with one line type of things)...




Then we were off to more pubs!



This turned into an epic night. We walked back towards Chee's house, when I found a shopping cart half off the sidewalk.

I picked it up and started pushing it. The others were confused at first, but once we put Chee in it the shopping cart's full potential really started to show. I am such a good influence on people mwahaha.


you can see he was carrying my hoops for me! So nice!


We got back and started trying to play pool. This was a fail. I found a silly hat and we took a picture of this!



I was happy! But kind of drunk so we ended up trying to watch this horror movie. I started falling asleeeeep so I went upstairs to bed.