I realize I didn’t take any pictures of “Galway” itself. Truth be told we didn’t “see” much of it anyway, and I will blame it on my shot nerves from the hell of driving.

First, we knew we were in Galway, but assumed we were nowhere close to our hotel. It was kind of hilarious, because as an American female the first thing I did was pull into a gas station to ask directions. The Westwood House Hotel was suppose to be pretty well known according to its ratings, but when I asked anyone how to find it they didn’t have a clue. We gave one man the street name, and he answered us with what would become the standard Irish answer:

“go tru dat roundabout, to da next roundabout, to ta t’ird roundabout and stay to da left to da next roundabout…..”

The Irish don’t do directions with street names. It’s ALL ABOUT the roundabouts.

At one point, we ended up in the University area of town and gave up. We decided to just park, get out, eat, and get a beer. We parked in the world’s smallest parking garage, and headed into the first pub we saw.

We ate the best pub food ever. I am so mad I can’t remember the name of the place, but we split the most delicious bowl of fish salmon chowder (my pick) and a giant fish and chips. This food puts every pub I’ve ever been to, to shame. The fish was so fresh it barely even tasted like fish. As luck would have it, the owner of the bar was sitting a few seats away from us.

He owned the hotel we were looking for as well.

How fricken bizarre is that? When we told him we were looking for the Westwood, he bought us a drink and we got proper directions.

We got there, had our fingers crossed and said a prayer our luggage would be there. Nope.

We went to our room and crashed. We woke up from a nap, cleaned up, and headed down to the hotel restaurant (in our dirty clothes, lovely) and shared some stir fry thai food. Sounds bizarre, but we asked the bartender what his favorite thing on the menu was, that was it, and it was amazingly delicious. Bob enjoyed Guinness, but truth be told I don’t really like beer, so I drank wine.

Each city has a bar district, and we wanted to hear live music so we headed over there to check it out. Of all of the cities, this was probably the most locals we saw out, and the only place we heard some live Irish music. We only went to Taaffes Bar, because honestly I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. I drank some Murphy’s which was on special, listened to a drunk man tell me way more about his body functions and fluids than I ever needed to know about someone, and we called it a night.

This was our view. The homes reminded me of Canada. We went down to the hotel pub because we’d overslept past “Full Irish Breakfast” in the restaurant. Bob still ordered a full Irish breakfast (I don’t think I’d ever seen such a huge plate of food for 1 meal- blood sausage included-GAG) and I had a bagel and lox.

Time to get back into the car, God help me, and head to Dublin. If only I’d known in Galway what to expect when it came to Dublin traffic I don’t think I would’ve EVER driven into that city.