Ward Words

Today was our first day of really unpleasant weather. We had been lucky with mostly sunny and semi-warm weather up until now, and today the rain/mist and coldness came back. We were told the warm weather was unusual, so we felt lucky to have had any warm weather at all!

After our last breakfast with Frank and Joan at Petra House (yum), we walked into downtown Galway for some souvenir shopping and to check out the Spanish Arches. The arches are on the left bank of the Corrib River, at the point where the river meets the sea. The 2 remaining arches (of 4) are what is left of a 16th century bastion, meant to protect merchant ships from looters. Spanish merchants often docked at this point in the 18th century, thus the name. There is an inscription dedicating the arch to Christopher Columbus. There are many stories about how Columbus sailed through Galway on his way to the Americas--but most agree the stories are unfounded, although Columbus did mention sailing through Galway on earlier voyages. Another nearby site, St. Nicholas Church, is storied to be the site where Columbus prayed before his voyage. As there is a lot of conflicting information on this, it's hard to say if any of that is true or not...but it was still cool to see!

After walking through town, we picked up our bags from Petra House and headed south-east toward the Rock of Cashel. It was about a 3 hour drive, and we had no idea of where the castle was located, other than in the town of Cashel. Luckily, it was situated atop a hill, so all we had to do was drive towards it. Unluckily, being atop a hill, there was no protection from the wind and cold and it turned out to be an outdoor attraction. So cold! Lucas had especially looked forward to the Rock of Cashel and was a bit underwhelmed--there was only a small visitors "lobby" with minimal information followed by a short, poorly made film in the audio-visual room. We missed the last tour by 30 minutes, so we took ourselves out into the cold for a self-guided tour of the ruins. Much of the castle was covered up because of UV irradiation being undertaken to kill microbiological growth on the art. We did see some neat carvings and tombstones, and in general it was cool to visit.

After the Rock we walked into town to visit the former Bishop's Palace, now the Palace Hotel. Frank at Petra House had highly recommended at stop there, and we were glad we took his advice. The hotel itself was beautiful, and we stopped in the Guinness Bar on the lower level to warm ourselves up with tea and coffee. It is said that this bar was the birthplace of Guinness beer, as Arthur Guinness lived here with his father, who was once steward to the bishop. Inside the bar is a wall handpainted with names of all the famous persons who have visited--a small list includes: the Edge, Hayley Mills, President Reagan, Princess Caroline...

We left the hotel and drove on to Clogheen, where we would be staying for the night. We found our B&B, Ballyboy House, fairly easily, considering that road construction had sent us into town on a detour and our directions were backwards unbeknown to us! Once at the house, we relaxed with tea and muffins by the fire, provided by Breeda, the owner. Breeda also provided us with a recommendation for a place for dinner, so we headed out to the Lucky Leprechaun. This night happened to by Holy Thursday, so the restaurants were empty while everyone was attending church services. In fact, we were the only ones at the restaurant, save for the staff...The server was very nice and even though we had a bit of trouble understanding her accent ("are you here on hotlist?" turned out to be "are you here on holidays?" after our 4th time of asking her to repeat herself....). After dinner, we went back to Ballyboy House (which, by the way, was a 400 year old house!) and researched our drive back to Dublin for the next day.

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