What a whirlwind the last few days have been!  Last we left off, Shannon and Teresa were here for about a day and a half before we picked up and headed into greener pastures- Ireland!

 We had a late afternoon flight, which had us touching down in Dublin at 7 pm before quickly getting on a bus to head right to Galway.  Although the bus ride was an additional 2.5 hours, we thought it was best to do it that night so we could spend the entire next day exploring Galway.  We had grand hopes of seeing at least 3 cities, but with only 4 days and the bus as our only form of transportation (aint nobody got time to rent a car in a country where they drive on the left AND sit on the right….accident waiting to happen), after extensive research, we decided to do Galway for one day, a trip to the Cliffs of Moher for one day, and spend 1.5 days in Dublin.  A quick trip, but we sure did pack in a lot of fun stuff!

We arrived late at night on Friday, checked into our hostel (Galway City Hostel, if you’re interested.  Highly recommended!), went and had a quick drink at the pub across the street, and headed to bed.  Bright and early the next morning, we started with breakfast.

I fell in love with that Irish Brown Bread!  Our hostel had fresh loaves every morning, so a few pieces with some Irish butter did the trick for holding us over until lunch.  I even brought a couple of loaves back with me 😉

Once we were semi-full, we headed out to explore everything Galway had to offer!  It’s a small town and I really felt like one day was enough time to see Galway itself.

 The entire “town” can be crossed in less than ten minutes, so we took our time meandering.

We took a detour through the local Saturday farmer’s market where we stopped to look at the jewelry and taste some homemade Irish cakes.

We walked along the river and soaked up the sunshine, which was a welcome surprise, since we were expecting a lot of rain 🙂

And then we headed back the other way for a 7 km walk along the water that was recommended by the hostel.  The views were breathtaking. All of the following photos are basically the same, but they are all so pretty so I want to share. 

Ireland is known for it’s natural beauty (and it’s drinking), but I never expected it to be quite as lush and vibrant as it was.

About halfway through our walk, our stomachs really started to say it was lunchtime, so we made a stop for some (really, really good) wraps before continuing our walk through town.  We stopped for a few minutes to listen to this band play and they were incredible.  Their name is The Band Anna if you’re interested.  If Ireland does anything right, it’s their abundance of really great live music!!

More walking ensued, all through the little town.

A little while later, we stopped for some super strong coffee (pretty sure we had triple shot macchiatos).  Fueled up and ready to go, we switched to something a little more Irish….

This trend continued for a few hours, as we were told multiple times that the best way to experience Ireland is in the pubs.  So that’s just what we did…

We made our way to dinner a little while later and had one of the best meals of our trip.  Of course I don’t know the name of the restaurant, but we were served delicious carrot (?) soup and Irish brown bread, and then second courses of our choice.

After dinner, we continued the drinking from earlier doing a little of our own pub crawl.

I’m all for drinking beer, but these pint-sized beers are no joke!!  My stomach could hardly handle all of the liquid.  Shannon and Teresa have that Irish blood, so they did better than I did haha.  By the end of the night, we were completely wiped, but super excited for the trip the next day!