Ireland Trip Day 6

We left Killarney this morning for GALWAY!!!!! I was a little excited. And a little impatient throughout the journey. Just a little, though. ;) David, our tour guide, gave us instructions to write Limericks throughout the long journey and we would have a contest later that day. I was very entertained that we drove through Limerick as we were writing Limericks.
Our first stop of the day was at Bunratty Castle. This is a restored castle between Limerick and Galway. All of the restorations are period appropriate so we could see what a castle really looked like in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. The castle is surrounded by a folk park in which you could see how the villagers around the castle would have lived. We saw quite a few buildings, then discovered by looking at the map that we hadn’t even made a dent in viewing the park!
After this we moved closer to Galway with a visit to the Cliffs of Moher. Forgive me if I’m not too excited – this was my fourth visit in two years and third visit since January.
We then proceeded through the Burren to the Aillwee Caves. Again, been there done that, caves don’t change much in three months. See my post on The Burren.
After this visit, David read the limericks aloud and awarded a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and booby prizes. My Uncle Pat won the booby prize which got him a piece of turf! Here is his limerick:
He traveled so far ‘cross the sea
Seeing sites ‘til weak in the knee
then Guinness and whiskey
got him feeling quite frisky
He woke to find “she” was a “he”
After an agonizingly long journey for me, we arrived in Galway! (In case you can’t tell, Galway is probably the best city, not only in Ireland, but in the world.) We stayed at the Hanley Oaks Hotel, which to my disappointment, was in Salthill (a suburb) and not in Galway. Town was a thirty minute to an hour walk. L Tonight I was able to take a lot of our group to the Crane Bar, one of my favorite pubs in Galway. They have a traditional session every Sunday night, which usually includes a wonderful Irish singer named Steven James. Sadly, Steven was not there that night, but we had a good time anyway.