Irish Road Trip

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Two Americans drive a car in Ireland…

And do it quite well 😎

Hands at 10 and 2 and checking mirrors every 8 seconds like your driver’s ed teacher was sitting shotgun.  #rulefollowers 

We navigated through the city, only honked at twice for “encouragement” to make that foreign right hand turn.  Back and forth between 120 km/hr and 80 km/hr and throw in some tolls…conversion and currency…do we give them a coin or paper…how does this window roll down …after 2 hours we arrived in Galway. On the way to this lovely western town, we stopped at the Castletown castle. What they lack in creativity with names, they sure do make up for in their landscape, streams and green fields for days.  

Let’s circle back to their naming abilities and language in general for a minute…this might be due to something we learned yesterday…(see we’re putting it all back together🤓)…the Irish alphabet has only 19 letters and with their words when you see an H it makes the letter prior to it sound silent. So they add in a letter only to delete a letter and it’s sound. One, who thought of that and two, who said “yes that sounds like a great idea”. Nancy Drew’s new assignment. 

Currently only 1% of the country can speak the Irish language but it is required to be taught in schools, as well as posted on all signs throughout the country, something Ireland’s current president has made of significant importance as it has been said a country without a language is a country without a soul. End of lesson, more to come on the Europe 2.0 PowerPoint.

Moving past the name, the castle was delightful and the grounds were impeccable. 

Next we stopped in Athlone. Charming lit’l place, again one of the tastiest meals yet, complete with two songs from the dirty dancing soundtrack and signs out front that spoke to us 😎stellar trip advisor review in progress for sure, one of us has a real knack for writing reviews.

We saw our namesake river, the Shannon, and got to dress up Game of Thrones style courtesy of the Athlone castle/modern exhibit. 

Lastly we arrived in Galway. Mary, the owner of the place we lay supine, greeted us as we walked through the red door with a warm Irish welcome. We ventured down to the town center, bellied up to the church turned bar and listened to sweet young Irish lads play American songs like it was their job. And honoured our Adele request with open arms 🎶but had to look up the lyrics on their phone. #AforEffort

We moved on to Tig Coili’s and met an older gent from Cork who provided just the local Irish flare we were looking for. The band was authentic, complete with elbow bags, mumbled words, and the spirit of a pep band on college game day. 

Ended the night with a mountain of Irish bread as we went home to rest our heads to get ready for our next Irish adventure. We’re also currently living by the bay, might go for a run the next day, what do you say?

Sincerely, Dr. Seus and Happy Gilmore