Sligo - Galway

There was lots of driving today.

We took of 'early' (at 9:30am) from Sligo and headed down the west coast towards Galway, stopping at Westport for morning tea.

Westport is a lovely town - but for some reason the traffic through the main part of the village was gridlocked! I have never seen so many cars trying to go through such small streets...

 We wanted to get to Westport Quay to see the ocean but after seeing the traffic trying to get through town we asked our faithful GPS to find us a way around the village....we ended up driving down a tiny lane. We didn't get to the Quay but we did get to the ocean! It was a beautiful view and we could see all the way out to the Isle of Clare (which I am sure is a very magical and wonderful place indeed!).

This is where we ended up....gorgeous and very peaceful.

After some more driving, we spotted what looked like a castle in the middle of a field. Stopping to investigate we found out it was the Ross-Errilly Friary, which was built in 1351by the Franciscan monks, but was abandoned in 1753, after being expelled over 7 times.

The Friary's "neighbours"

The Friary was deserted so we spent a while exploring inside the ruins. Neve and Eloise were pretending to be the 'two musketeers' finding secret passageways!! I can imagine that it's original state it must have been quite a spectacular building.

 The two musketeers!!!























 We reached Galway late in the afternoon and went down to Galway bay where across the water we could see another castle-looking building....but that will be tomorrow's adventure.

We also dipped our toes in the Atlantic ocean...it actually wasn't TOO cold but I could imagine it would be a shock to the system if you took a dive in!

We had dinner sitting outside on a balmy evening (it was actually really warm today - about 26 or 27 degrees by my guess) where Neve and Eloise broke down the language barriers and got into a good game of something with a little Russian girl!

We then ventured in Galway city, which was just gearing up for a big Friday night ahead. The sun was just starting to set at 9pm when we headed back to our B&B - a good nights' sleep and back into it tomorrow!

A few thoughts on Ireland so far....
- Cadbury chocolate tastes different. Shane says he likes it better, I think it tastes 'fatter'. I studied the ingredients but would have no idea what they are in Australia so can't tell if there are truly any differences. You know how we have the 'glass and a half in every block'? Well on their wrapper I saw that it said something like 'contains no less than 426mL of real milk in every 227g of chocolate'.....just doesn't have the same ring to it!
- The Irish love beer! Listening to a 'news' station on the radio in the car today there was literally an hour discussion with a 'beer expert' to talk about different beers...
- The speed limits in Ireland are too high. Never thought I would say that but on tiny one-lane (in TOTAL,  not each direction!) roads the speed limit can be up to 80km/hr....thankfully Shane is being very sensible!
- Irish hot chips are awesome
- Irish water pressure is rubbish! They all have 'power showers' which just means that the water has enough pressure to actually come out of the shower head as a slight spray rather than a pathetic dribble. I am missing my big shower head with water blasting out at me.