April 6-8: Galway, Ireland
You had a work trip to Dublin, so I decided to meet you there and spent the weekend together in Ireland. We landed on Galway because I remembered loving it the first time I went there 15 years ago. It was not what I remembered, but I loved it none-the-less.
You did an amazing job driving across the country on the left side of the road. We stopped in Athlone for lunch and saw the castle there. It was a hilarious exhibition and couldn’t have been a better stop. We continued on to Galways and checked in to the cutest B&B ever – The Stop.
Our first stop was a cliché Irish pub for Guinness. Worth it in every way. Then on to dinner at Ard Bia which was absolutely delicious from start to finish. They were fully booked, but fit us in at the bar and I’m so glad they did.
We spent the next day at the Cliffs of Moher. I tried to drive, but I hated it more than you did, so you kindly stayed at the wheel. We saw a random castle on the way down. The Cliffs were very pretty and we were both equally convinced that someone was going to go carreeing off of them at any moment (since we had all hopped a fence to walk along the edge).
On Sunday, we drove north and caught a ferry over to Inishear. We rented bikes and circled the whole island in search of sheep. Weirdly, we found none, but we met many horses and cows along the way. We set off for lunch only to discover that the one open pub had no food (except a bag of crisps). We drank a Guinness and set back off. On our way up to the castle ruins, we spotted a B&B that was serving lunch. There a woman served us fresh crab legs at a picnic table in her yard surrounded by chickens. It was hilarious and delicious. From there we headed out on the far side of the island where there is a ship that was wrecked on shore. It’s just sitting there, so you can walk all around and in it. The sky way so blue and the rust on the ship was so red – it was absolutely stunning. And also cold.
For dinner that night, we had pizza at The Dough Bros. It was a delightful change of pace from Zurich pizza which, while delicious, really misses the mark on the dough side (in my personal opinion). Plus, after biking all day in the freezing cold, it felt very earned.
