Galway or the High Way

Saturday May 9, 2026

Galway

Weather is sunny and fresh, around 12-14 degrees, with a good, stiff breeze.

We are situated next door to the Dexcon arena, home of the Connacht Irish Union Rugby Club, with the final home game of the season tonight. We had actually been thinking for a month or two that given we are right there, it would be fun to attend a game, sit in the stands surrounded by fans cheering for the home side. We thought, depending on how we were feeling we would just get walk-up tickets. Since we were so thankful to not have a day in the car and just hanging around town, we could easily put that on our itinerary, so we walked over to the stadium to see when the ticket office opened. 11:00 am was a little early for it but a security guard told us that there was little chance as the 12,000 seat stadium had been sold out for "a month or two" but we should come back mid-afternoon just in case. We did return before the ticket office opened but someone who works there walked by and asked if we were "doing ok". When we indicated our intent, she was quite forthright but apologetic that we were SOL. Even our accents didn't help us here. 

Anyway, it was back to the first priority of the day, which was a walk to the Saturday market and a stroll through the "Latin Quarter". The market was largely at Eyre Square - a collection of stand of vendors selling their artisan wares, jewelry and coffee stalls. We even saw a game of rugby being played in the square. The game looked like a cross of an organized game and a bunch of guys playing in a park but they wore things to identify their team, like a jersey with the number 39 for one side and horizontally striped sailor hats for the other. We had come across them just as the last plays we're being run and then watched them all hug each other, run a "handshake gauntlet" then pose for pictures together. Now, I can only surmise what happened next but if you don't know anything about rugby, you might be surprised to know that they are all going out drinking together, likely to excess.

The post game Gauntlet handshake.

Tent vendors in Eyre Square. 

The walk through the Latin Quarter is something of a euphemism as we didn't see anything that resembled Latino culture.  However, the Latino connection might be more reflective of the area's history rather than what is currently going on there, as back in the 12th century it was the staging area for trade with Spain. We saw several wool shops purporting (or implying) their products were from the Aran Islands, just off the coast from Galway. Wandering through one of the stores, i saw several large cartons with shipping informarion that indicated the boxes came from Killarney. I guess that makes sense since I can't imagine all of the sweaters were hand knit by little old ladies working a pedal spinning wheel, as I saw in a video in one store. 

While we have had several recommendations since arriving in Ireland to make the journey over to the Aran Islands, we needed an "easy" day. If we had planned three nights in Galway that would have been a high priority.

What the Latin Quarter is really about is shopping at stores and stands, with a number of buskers. The main street is closed to vehicular traffic, which is a good thing because there were a LOT of people.

Galway Latin Quarter buskers. 

Once again, that's a big file.

In the afternoon, we did yet ANOTHER load of laundry, after paying 30 Euros to having it done in Balarney. We got muddy down in the cavern so some garments were totally out of commission. It's like motorcycling in the old days: never pass a gas station without filling up or like the new days: never pass a bathroom without, well, you get the picture. Doing laundry is pretty much a requirement when you have two nights someplace, so that sink washed items at least have the opportunity to dry before packing up again or having enough time for in-house facilities to run a full cycle or a commecial operation to do the stuff and sort it. When we checked into the Galway B&B, we were given a tour of the laundry room so muddy stuff was given a cycle today. I pulled our clothes out of the washing machine and since the tea towels in the dryer were still a little wet, I threw our washing in with theirs to dry. When it all came out, I ended up folding their laundry in addition to our own.

We had a good long walk, taking a circuitous  route to Harry's,  the place we tried to go last night.

On our walk, we went by a salt water "lake" with houses situated across the street.  On the lake side of the road, there were little plots of land marked "private property" that may have been yard-plots of the houses across the road. They were all fenced and portioned off from one another. Some were very tidy and manicured while others were wild an overgrown. 

I wasn't quite as motivated as last night to have a guilty pleasure but I did manage to choke down a pretty good double burger and fries. The place was hopping when we arrived at 4:00 pm and there was limited availability for a seat; this is a restaurant dressed up to look like a bar so everybody has to have a seat, unlike a bar where you just squeeze in as many people as physically possible. We sat beside each other and (sort of) watched a soccer game on the television. There was a festive atmosphere, however, as many people were primed for the big rugby game tonight. Lots of people dressed in the home colours.

We walked back to our place and I said to Nan that I was going to walk over to the stadium entrance. Even though it was 2 1/4 hours before the match, there is lots of fans around and many already filing in though it's not clear where they are going because nobody is going into the seating area. They are probably going into the in-house pub.

Entering the stadium over two hours before kickoff.

One of the back ways into the stadium, we'll protected. 

I went back to our next-door B&B and said to Nan that i was going to go back later when the game was on and try to get a look over the fence to get a picture of the game being played, then I realized that our bathroom window faced the playing pitch!

Our view... from the bathroom.

End zone seating 

Outside our B&B.

That is a Honda Pan American 1300!

It is 8:24 pm and they are playing You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet by Bachman Turner Overdrive!

Can't Get Enough, We Want Moher!

Galway

Friday May 8, 2026        

Distance traveled: 236 km

Cumlative distance: 1095 km

Temperature: 12.5 - 14.0 with clouds and occasional sunny breaks. And occasional showers. 

We needed to refuel before leaving Killarney, so we stopped and put 35 litres of diesel fuel in to fill up the car. We still had 200 km of range by the car's estimate but we didn't know if fuel might get a little scarce as we traveled north. We had traveled 850 km already so I was pretty amazed at the fuel efficiency of the Skoda deisel engine and when I filled the tank, the revised estimate was a range of 900 km. However, we drove 175 km before the range estimate started decreasing. Pretty amazing. I guess it was worth the extra five or ten "cents" a litre to pay for diesel. 

Our first adventure of the day was a ferry crossing of the Shannon Estuary. Not that a ferry crossing is so special but we saw numerous dolphins in the water in areas around the boat.  Nan spotted the first one but studying the water after seeing one, we saw several others as they crested out of the water and the sun glistening on their backs.  The other special thing about the ferry is that we made it on. We hadn't made any kind of plan to target a specific sailing, just going on faith that it would work out. I think a few cars behind us going on faith had their luck run out. 

Fake castle foreground, REAL castle background.

Isn't that amazing? Souvenir shops built rihjt into the hillside!

If you have looked at our tracks on Spotwalla, you are probably thinking we hit the big time driving to Quilty. They should have named it Guilty. As Charged. There were no quilts and no quilt shops. "Maybe it was named after something other than 'quilts'", says Nan. Well maybe because there wasn't much there except a view of the ocean (which was still good). But no quilts.

We came to the famous Cliffs of Moher, along the coastline. We could see from a considerable distance several tour buses and hundreds of cars parked, so we knew were at the right place. We paid 29 Euros, though we weren't sure what for. The view? The parking? We quickly learned that we paid for infrastructure.  We are out in the middle of NOWHERE but there are concession stands, souvenir shops, restaurants, an interpretive centre with fudge shops, a restaurant, theatre and, thankfully, washrooms. And stairs with fencing.  The view was indeed spectacular. 

Oh, and don't be fooled by the FAKE castle. It is not a castle but a party hall built by somebody name O'Brien in 1835 who, with amazing fortitute, anticipated throngs of tourists at the site just itching to drop their hard earned money on glitzy trinkets and crass tourist rip offs. 

We then made our way to the Doolin Cave, a massive cave discovered by two idiots, aged 18 and 19, in 1952 by crawling into a stream where it exited a moutain and traveling 500 metres IN THE DARK on their bellies into the moutain until they just happend to come across a huge cavern with a giant stalactite. THEN they lit their lanters! To be fair, they weren't really IDIOTS, they were more FOOLS. They were actually with a caving club from England out looking for adventure and spotted the stream. Without regard for their own personal saftety, they decided IN SECRET that they would crawl into the stream and into the hole that the stream had eroded away for the last 10 million years and NOT TELL ANYBODY. Had they gone missing, search parties would STILL be out there looking for them. 

Some of the cave where the "foolish"crawled to reach the cavern. 

We weren't quite as adventerous. We just paid money to climb down 12 stories of staircase, then through tunnels that had been hacked out with air pressure - no dynamite for fear of knocking down the one stalacite that had been growing for 300,000 years, onto the floor of the cave. We donned hard hats. That had been "sanitized", though I had my doubts. However, we did have to return them to a different spot underground to be "sanitized" before being handed out to the next tourists.  Notwithstanding, it was pretty spectatular. 

We ended up ditching our last two stops because, even without them, it was going to be a nine hour day and we were not going to get to the B&B until 6:30 pm. Driving on these back roads are time consuming. Lots of stops to take pictures and lots of avoiding other cars trying to take out our side view mirrors.  

In Galway, we checked into the B&B and immediately investigated dinner options. Since we have been eating relatively healthily since leaving Dublin, we felt we were due for some beer and unhealthy food, so looked for a bar not too far away.  We targeted a place and walked the 13 minutes only to be told they were full and we would have to wait about 40 minutes. Well, that was longer than I had planned to spend there and we were both hungry so we said "no way, Jose".  We opted for another place that I had seen looking for this one and it was a Portuguese place another six minutes on. Just a little hole in the wall, it had 22 seats and was full. But we could see somebody clearing out and we only waited five minutes before we were seated. As we waited, another couple exited and they stopped to tell us how good the food was. They are locals and frequent the restaurant quite regularly. They had been in only two weeks ago. They spotted our Canadian regalia (Nan's large Canadian flag on the front of her sweater and my Canadian flag on my jacket sleeve and they proceeded to tell us how much they admired Mark Carney. 

The food was absolutely amazing at this restaurant, Alma. It is owned and run by a husband and wife who, while visiting on holidays in 2014 thought "we could live here". In 2019, as they started to take steps to move to Galway, received an unsolicted offer to buy their Lisbon restaurant and ended up moving to Galway and starting this one. The wife does all the front of house business, the husband does all the cooking. From what I could see when I was nosing around the counter, they had one employee in the back, whom I suspect did the dishes and probably prep duties. It was very quaint, unsophisticated but an absolute gem. It is a must visit restaurant your next time in Galway.