Oh it's been too long and there is now way too much to write. Soooo here goes a long post full of ridiculousness that will take you until Thursday when we arrived in Dublin! When we arrived in Galway... An hour early... We walked through the adorable town. Town seems too small because on comparison to Vernazza it was like New York city... But still small and full of flowers and on the water. We walked straight to the house... But the map didn't have the right streets so we just walked until we somehow found the house. Since it was still 2:00, we had 1.5 hours to kill. We headed to the rocks by the water and sat to read Ricks book. After about 30 minutes we noticed there was a storm brewing. I told Maia it only drizzles here... So no worries. But then.... It started lightening. And then thunder. We had 20 minutes until Sarah, our host, would be home.... And then buckets... Buckets of water started pouring on our heads. Soooo much water. Our raincoats were quickly soaked through. Our backpacks (with ALL of our clothes) were soaked trough!!! We squatted by walls and hid under trees (yes it was still lightening...). About 5 minutes after 3:45 Sarah pulled in her driveway and we invaded her perfect, clean, and adorable house with our smelly, wet selves.
She was sooo sweet. Led us to a room to hang our stuff to dry and gave us the tour. She offered us two separate rooms (one with a twin and one with a double) but we told her it wouldn't be necessary to dirty up two rooms! We stuck with the double and it was perfect! We hung our clothes around the room to dry and headed straight to shower. We didn't want any of our hostel on us in this perfect new house. After showering we got ready, grabbed a key and headed out for lunch/dinner. Sarah had recommended a pizza place and Rick had mentioned it as well... Soooo we walked over there and got a delicious pizza and some wine. Man was that wine a bad idea... Hahah ten minutes later I was ready for bed. We crossed the bridge over the perfect river and headed to the pedestrian city center in Galway.
Musicians lined the streets with everything from accordions to recorders. There were some with marionettes, others with a pile of sand that they used to carve out a dog. The streets were full of life and music! What more could you want! After a bit of walking, we stopped in for some Italian Gelato... What can we say, we LOVE Ireland but needed a piece of Italy! Hahah. Flavors: Kinder Bueno and Ferrero Rocher! Delicious!!! We then headed to a bus tour office that Sarah recommended to ask about the tour to the cliffs of Moher. The cliffs were one of the big things we wanted to see and with the rain... we figured another day on a bus tour would make it better. It turned out that the price for the 2-hour public bus ride to and from the cliff was 15 euros... and a tour from 10 am to 6 pm of the cliffs and the Burren region was just 16!! Um... Yes please! We got a wonderful deal and after that... we walked straight back to Sarah's perfect house and tried to dry up. On most of our walk it had stayed sunny but the last 5 minutes were VERY wet! We used the rainy evening to relax and recharge!
We woke up at 9 with our alarm clocks. First time since before our hostel.... Every time before that we woke up naturally because we were well rested.... But the 3 sleepless nights at the hostel wore us out!!!
Breakfast was prepared for us downstairs, so incredibly precious!!!! There were little jars prepared with Greek yogurt, berries, and granola, then pastries, coffee, and scones. Sooo sweet. Sarah had told us not to clean our things and only move them to the counter if we felt like it... but clearly we washed them. After that... We walked to the bus and got on it!
The ride wasn't all that impressive in comparison to all the amazing that we have seen, but it was really interesting historically. Over 11 castles in 1 day. Our first stop was a cave... Maia and I didn't feel like paying the tour price to see a cave, soooo we hiked a bit, climbed a bit of the mountain and sat and played the ABC game naming animals. By the time we made it to the end... It was 50 minutes later and we had to load the bus ---by the way... Does anyone know an animal with an X??
The next stop was a rock formation and a very old tomb! Very cool, but not as cool as our next stop. It had been pouring down rain until this point and it was already 1:30... so we were scared our 90 minutes at the cliff would be cut short for lunch and very wet... But nooo rain once we got there!! The cliffs. Wow doesn't even cover it. It is 5 miles of cliffs into the ocean. We had 90 minutes and walked a LOT of it. If any of you have seen the sixth Harry Potter movie... Those are the cliffs we saw! And the ones in PS I love you.. We think!
The cliffs were gorgeous, but as y'all know... I'm afraid of heights. Add in a LOT of wind... And you get a slumped over Martina thinking she's gonna fall down the cliffs! Maia--- cannot understand why I act like an idiot every time we are next to heights !!! Too funny!
Once on the bus, it started raining again... We headed to a tiny town named Doolin and had lunch there before heading back to Galway through the coast. It was nearly impossible not to fall asleep, but we did it! Probably the only two that didn't drift off with the soft Irish music in the background.
Once in Galway we walked town and through musicians galore! Two precious guys were singing some ONCE songs and I about died!!! another group of guys were playing some great Irish jigs... and then we crossed the river to our side of town and walked for an hour on the "prom" by the water. Again... It was not raining... And then it started pouring.... Sooo we arrived at Sarah's soaked.
She was pulling in at the same time (8:30pm) and was coming by just to check on us and make sure we were ok! How sweet is that! After drying up and settling in, we walked to the supermarket and got sandwich stuff and things for dinner. We came back to an empty house, set up dinner in the kitchen, and ate in the piece of her house. It was unreal how wonderful being in her house was, compared to our hostel !!!
We fell asleep early and woke up later to an amazing breakfast. Since we expected rain, we slept in and had plans to shower and eat and relax until 4:16 when our bus left for Dublin. We needed a bit of recharging. At around 11, we headed out to the town to buy our bus tickets and then came back with some famous Galway fries to go with our lunch at Sarah's! The afternoon was perfect! We were sooo happy to leave her house clean and with blow dried hair!!! Sooo thankful!
We arrived at the station early an sat on our bus with wifi and waited. I was feeling pretty crummy with a soar throat, headache, cough, etc...
But I thought it was allergies from Sarah's cat... Sooo I took a Benadryl... 30 minutes later... I was OUT!!!!!!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
No comments:
Post a Comment