Galway City

On our fourth day in Ireland, we stayed in Galway and toured the city for the day. Our tour guide, Matthew (pronounced "Maffew" when he was referring to himself) took us around and told us about the history of the city.

The 14 tribes of Galway were basically a trade guild and all had castles and towers built around the city for protection. One of the tribes was named Darcy, so that was pretty cool to see my name hanging on a banner in Irish Square. We also went into an Anglican church called St. Nicholas which was founded in the twelfth century. It's sort of humbling to walk into a building with that much history.

Flag with my name.

Stained glass window in one of the many cathedrals in the city.

Shop street in Galway. I love the colors on all the buildings.

As we were walking over to our next adventure on a boat, we saw these baby swans playing in a calm, shallow portion of the river.

Cygnets and their mother swimming in the River Corrib.

We took a boat ride on the River Corrib with the 2010 champion Irish Coffee maker, and Irish step dancer. She gave us a demonstration of how to properly make an Irish Coffee, which included putting the raw sugar (in Ireland they call it brown sugar) into the coffee and completely dissolving it first. Then she added a shot of Powers whiskey, which measures 35ml in Ireland. The final touch was lightly whipped cream (no sugar) which is gently placed on top of the coffee. She said that if you don't whip the cream, you have to pour it over the back of teaspoon so it doesn't sink into the drink.

After that demonstration she showed us how to step dance and made several people join her. My husband was one of the dancers and even got a certificate!

These next photos are of Menlo Castle (Mionloch if you prefer the Irish spelling) on the banks of the River Corrib. The castle experienced a tragic fire in 1910 and has been abandoned since that time. It's a good example of how nature takes over when humans step out, especially in a place that receives so much moisture and has such an extended growing period.

Our first view of the castle.

A view of the castle from another angle. This picture is actually straight, it's the castle that's leaning.

After the tour was over, we stopped at a little cafe on the river to have lunch. While I did have to really bundle up, the sun was out so we sat on the patio right next to the river and had really good burgers. Irish grass-fed beef has a really nice flavor. That afternoon we went out on a walk by ourselves to a cemetery we had passed on one of our trips out of the city. It was beautiful with Celtic crosses all over the cemetery. This one below had such beautiful knot work that I couldn't resist snapping a photo.

Celtic cross in a Galway cemetery.

A worker at the cemetery drove up to me and asked me, "ye've no care here, have ye?" I thought we were going to be chastised for being in the cemetery, but responded in the negative at which point he replied, "good, because we're closing the gates in fifteen minutes." He was just making sure that we were going to be alright leaving on time, but since I'm not Catholic and don't know the norms around these things there, I at first thought we were getting in trouble!

Our next stop was the grocery store where we picked up some fresh fruit as that's hard to come by when you're eating out for every meal, and some local candies. My husband just about went into raptures over the lemon bon-bons we found. My kids were really fascinated by how light the colors were on the candies since artificial colors are banned in the EU. They also loved that in pretty much every candy, the greens were lime flavored instead of apple like we mostly find in the US.

We walked out to the bay that evening to have dinner at a restaurant which served amazing seafood. When we were walking back to the hotel we passed this archaeological dig of The Hall of the Red Earl. Unfortunately I only had my phone camera with me at the time, and it was behind a glass wall, so the photos aren't great, but you can get an idea of what they found in the city.

The dig behind the glass. You can see my reflection in this very mediocre photo.

This plaque showed a map of The Hall of the Red Earl which is being excavated.

That was our final night in Galway and we headed out to Killarney (Cill Airne) the next day. I'll write all about that gorgeous area starting in tomorrow's post!