Day 9 – On the road again to Galway

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We had another early start for sight-seeing today. We went to see some Abbeys, Castles and the city of Galeway. The main issue is getting anywhere. Judy tells Kirsten what she wants to see and then Kirsten has to try and figure out how to get there and if we have the time to fit everything in. It gets interesting. First stop was Quinn Abbey, a century or two old Abbey with a cemetery inside and outside the Abbey. We toured the grounds and it had very scenic surroundings. Judy was climbing all over and into it. There was no one there to tell you couldn’t so she did. Including hopping a fence.

After the Abby we were on our way to Galway. While driving we saw a castle or abbey and decide to stop and take a look. We did this a few times. A few times we gave up when we could not find the castle we were actually looking for. We were driving into the town of Antheny and they had a castle. We found it with ease (insert scarsim) and decided to take a look. It was a nice castle. It was restored well and Kirsten must have called ahead or something because we got another private tour of a castle. The history was impressive and the grounds were nice. Now we were on our way to Galway. You can actually sing the “San Jose” song with this, “Do you know the way to Gal-a-way? Wo wo wo wo, you know the tune.

The driving went well in Galway and we got in and found parking. Then we headed to city center where all the action is. We quickly found a double decker bus and hopped on for a 90 minute tour of the city. Our timing was good as we had time to grab a snack and then get on the bus. The tour guide was very nice and knowledgeable. She spoke several languages and I’m sure the old German ladies on the tour appreciated her translating. Galeway is nice, small, pretty. JFK spoke in the Eyre Park 50 years ago and it was renamed to John F Kennedy Park, but no one calls it by that. There is a small podium with a bust of JFK commemorating the event. The tour bus went all over the city and at one point all four of us were asleep while the guide was talking about Galeway’s churches, markets, rivers, shops, and more but we don’t know because we were sleeping. We did get off the bus and walk around to a few of the sights she mentioned. We hit a beautiful, enormous, modern Catholic church and another smaller one, St. Nick’s. It was starting to rain off and on and we needed to get back to our town for a night at Pepper’s Bar for dinner and music.

We headed home and could not find the route we wanted to get back to Bodyke. We drove through the city of Gort three times trying to figure it out. We finally gave up and headed back down the long way to the major highway. O’well, we tried.

The night at the bar was nice, we had a shuttle from the bar pick us up at the hotel and we ate and drank without worrying about driving. There were quite a few Americans there from the golf resort we were staying at. The men at the bar were happy because the owner put the US Open on the TV and every one watched it live. The food was decent and we could hear the music from the other room. After a couple of hours we did switch into the other room and had front row seats for the singer and accordion player. She played traditional Irish songs, and even threw a few in from John Denver and Johnny Cash.

Now the end of the night was a tricky one, because everyone from the bar needed to hop on the shuttle to go back to the golf resort. We surveyed the age and health of our competition of getting onto the first shuttle. We liked our chances, except for trying to move Gene away from the TV and the US Open. With Gene in tow we might have weaseled in front of about 15 other people waiting for the shuttle. We squeezed in and had a lovely ride jam-packed van. This was probably our latest night in getting home, a whopping 11 pm. Wow. That is late for us oldies. Tomorrow is our last full day of sight-seeing.

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Photos

Quin Abbey

Quinn Abbey
Cemetery inside