Dublin to Galway and a return to driving on the left

Galway

Thursday was a travel day for us with no big plans outside of getting to Galway safely.  We picked up our cute little rental car at Dublin Airport and took to the roads.  Pretty quickly, Todd's driving on the left skills that he developed in New Zealand kicked right back into gear.  I just watched the scenery go by while Todd concentrated on not turning on the windshield wipers when he meant to turn on the blinkers.

After driving in New Zealand, I learned not to trust Google's estimation of how long it would take us to get from one point to another.  Google assumed we would be driving about 100km per hour (about 60 miles an hour), but on those tiny NZ roads, we were usually maxing out at 60km if we were lucky.  Based on everyone's descriptions of Ireland's roads, I ignored Google's time estimates and did my own time estimates based on the distance.  However, thanks to Ireland's membership in the European Union (and many signs acknowledge the EU funds), they have great motorways!!!  It only took us 2 hours to get from Dublin to Galway instead of the 3.5 hours I estimated - yahoo!

Upon our earlier than expected arrival in Galway, we found a car park, parked our little Hyundai I10, and set out to find lunch and walk around Galway City.  We walked down the riverwalk to the sea, grabbed lunch, and then walked around the older part of the city which is packed with bars and restaurants...and Occupy Galway,

Occupy Galway

Our B&B is in Salthill, about 3k outside Galway City and about 100m from the ocean.  There's a lovely promenade (that is stroller central in the late afternoon), and we took advantage of our proximity to take a nice late afternoon stroll.  At the end of the promenade, there was a diving platform that sat about 30 meters out from the beach.  We saw some teenagers on the platform jumping into the water and walked closer to see these crazies JUMP INTO THE NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN IN MARCH.  (Let's remember that the Titanic went down in mid-April, and the people in the water froze to death.)  What we thought was just crazy teenagers turned out to be crazy teenagers and crazy retirees (and no one in between - seriously.  No one.)  These cold water enthusiasts were swimming in the water and then changing right were we could all see them...especially when their towels were a bit too tiny to hide all the private bits.  Kudos to these intrepid swimmers and divers...I couldn't do it.

Us on the promenade

Todd touching the other side of the Atlantic

Older gentleman going in for a swim - teenagers waiting to jump

Jumping cow

View from the diving platform

We took another stab at fish & chips for dinner and then popped into a pub to drink more Guinness and listen to some excellent traditional music.  We also tried Bulmer's which is a delicious Irish hard cider - yum!