Galway

As is usual with me, what I most enjoyed of our trip overseas was the freedom to walk everywhere.  Only once did I get a bit too much walking in.  On our first night in Galway, we left our apartment late in the evening, looking for food. Without too much difficulty, we found our way to a fantastic Spanish tapas place.  Three “helpful” guys offered to guide us when I stopped to look at street names, but they weren’t local and they heard “tapas” as, well, something else, which really made their eyebrows shoot up . . . After dinner, though, we took a different route out of town to pick up groceries, missed the road back, and found ourselves walking the path along the highway well after 10 at night.  This being Galway, there were not only pedestrian paths, but also random helpful people just when we feared we had left civilization behind.  It was the night Ireland beat Italy in soccer, so everyone in Ireland was in a good mood, and had walked to the nearest pub for the game, so we had lots of help.  Still, when I told Mom we had covered about 7 miles in that outing, I knew it was a low estimate.

Although Mom had every right to be concerned about leaving the apartment with me again, she did it anyway, and we were rewarded with sights like these, of the town and Galway Cathedral:

And then I saw a sign I really need to put on our front door:

Heidi, that picture was for you (you scarred me with all of those “weird signs” pictures from your trips).  We see plenty of “Beware Dog” signs, but this would be more helpful for people courageous enough to enter our house.

Erin