Weird Day

So yesterday I got up nice and early and caught the bus to Galway city, and then to a small town called Athenry that has a bunch of old castle and church ruins. It was a long day of traveling and it took me about six hours in all to get there. When I did, I found a pleasant little town with the craziest and most narrow streets I have ever seen. There is one spot in the town where three one-lane roads converge into a two lane road with traffic going both ways, consequently leading to gridlock in a town the size of Ettrick. At one point, I was walking on the sidewalk and saw a farmer in his old Ford tractor waiting at the lights. He looked at me, shook his head, and laughed because he knew as well as I did that the traffic was unequivocally ridiculous.

When I found my hostel, I was let up by the bartender because the hostel was owned by a guy named Ethan, who owned the bar, liquor store, and the hostel above the store as well. The hostel was really nice, probably the nicest I have seen here, but there was one small problem; they were closed for the year! Apparently what happened was when I booked online, they sent me back an email that said they were closed, but since I left so early in the morning I never got the email. Ethan was nice enough to let me stay there the night anyway, free of charge. I was very grateful because it was already dark by that time.

After eating a small supper of oatmeal and bread, which I had with me, I decided to go down to the pub and get a pint. Ethan was manning the bar and it was a very cool place, built in the 1800s. One cool fact about it is that it used to be owned by White Star Line and that a ticket for the Titanic was sold in that very shop I was sitting in. I also learned that Cork, Ireland, was the last stop the Titanic took before it departed on it's fateful journey, and that only seven people got off at Cork (it went from Britain to Cork then America). Anyway I had a couple pints and some good craic with some of the locals and went to bed at 10:30. The heat was not on so it was cold, so I took the quilts off the other three beds and put them on mine, creating about a 14" depth of blankets. It looked utterly ridiculous but I slept quite well.

This morning I decided to treat myself to a nice breakfast so I went to a great small place across the street called the Old Barracks Pantry and had a traditional breakfast sitting next to a fire. Great great breakfast.

Decided to head to Galway for the night so I'm sitting in a comfortable hostel right now with a hot cup of coffee and clean clothes from the laundry. Think I'll spend a couple days here and explore the Arran Islands, a chain of islands off Galway Bay that are inhabited still today, with regular ferry service to Galway city. Hopefully I can get to elusive Doolin this week as well!