Galway Weekend, Part 1

I was really looking forward to this trip. As Arlette and I boarded the bus on Friday, we were talking about how the weather was supposed to be amazing - cloudy and sunny. Arlette even packed her sunglasses. We were ready for the Galway trip.

This is not Galway.

It turns out that Arlette and I managed to get on the wrong bus. Since neither of us knew anyone in the International Club that sponsored the trip, we didn't find out about this until the bus kicked us off in Wexford. We went three hours south instead of three hours west.

I thought the situation was hilarious, but Arlette was a little more flustered. We found a cozy little B&B to check into and then went to a nice seafood restaurant. We then found a pub with a trad band and enjoyed a couple of pints.

The band was very into the Irish patriotism thing. Lots of hatred towards Britain and all that.

We had a very Irish breakfast the next morning - eggs, pudding, ham, hash browns, and a tomato. We decided to take a walking tour of Wexford before we left for Galway. The tour started on the town quay, an area right around this statue.

This is John Barry, who helped found the American Navy during the Revolutionary War. There are a lot of ties between the two countries.

Also, you can see a sign post on the street corner to the right of the statue. The sign pointing towards the statue reads, "John Barry Statue."


Pictures of the harbor. You might notice that the sky is blue. That's how nice the weather was this weekend.



There's really only two streets in the city and less than 20,000 people, but it still feels like a city. More so than, say, Mentor.

Wexford was originally two settlements. One half was Christian and the other half Viking. Seriously. This is part of Kaiser Road, which comes from Viking for "Road to the Sea."



Part of the town wall and the western gate. Most of the land trade routes came through this gate.

I was a little suprised at how small the wall was. I don't think it was more than fifteen feet high, at the most. Clearly, Vikings are more talented at pillaging than at defense.


Two chruches, built right next to each other. The spikey one on the left was the more modern one, but the congregation died out in the 1950s. They decided to tear the roof off and call the site a ruin so they wouldn't have to pay taxes.

The walking tour was very interesting and gave us a good feel for the city. Afterwards, we took a break at one of the cafes then left for Galway.