Day Two: Exploring Galway

Céad míle fáilte! It's a classic Irish greeting that literally means "a hundred thousand welcomes." 🇮🇪☘️

After a terrific night’s sleep, we headed out to explore Galway. In the course of a couple of hours, we saw a cute little outdoor market, Eyre (pronounced “air”) Square, cute Shop Street, Latin Quarter, and a little arts & crafts market next to the Spanish Arch. A quick but ferocious downpour sent us back to our hotel.

Being right on the Atlantic coast, Galway’s weather rotates between sunny, chilly, windy, and rainy. Thankfully, we both wore raincoats. Not thankfully, we both wore jeans. Soaking wet jeans are … not fun.

A couple of random but kind of interesting notes…

- Katey’s optometrist wants her to use a prescription eye drop, but insurance won’t cover it. We went to an opticians office to ask them to fix her glasses and discovered the exact eyedrop is OTC here in Ireland and is literally a tenth of what it costs in America. (The shop gal said loads of Americans buy multiple boxes to take home. We will be doing the same.)

- A must-see in Galway is the Spanish Arch, built in the 1530s. There’s been a colloquial reference to the black Irish to refer to Irish people who have dark hair rather than the more traditional red hair. The theory is that the Spanish and Irish “co-mingling” back in the day was responsible for this variation among the Irish, but it’s apparently been debunked by historians.

-On a sad note … Katey lost her Wordle streak bc of the rime change and travel craziness of the past couple days. Thoughts 'n prayers appreciated at this difficult time. 😂

We’re just back from a great place called Monroe”s, where the majority of the Galway Folk Festival acts will perform. We thought we got there in time for a trad session, where local musicians just show up and play Irish music. We missed them, but did get to hear some fantastic bluegrass music by band named Bigtooth from … Madison, WI! 

For dinner at Monroe’s, Steve had the fish and chips and Katey had a delicious beef and Guinness stew. 😋 While we were hanging out after the show, two nice Irish ladies were chatting with us about the world and gave us some helpful suggestions. People here are so nice!

Looking forward to more Irish music tomorrow! 🎻🎶☘️