IRELAND PART V: GALWAY to MONAGHAN

DAY 7: Wednesday April 28, 2010

Wednesday was a travel day. I spent the morning in Galway City doing some last minute shopping. Galway has a large shopping district that is all pedestrian streets. The buildings are mostly vintage in style and the streets are cobblestone. A lot of the shops are souvenir shops selling t-shirts, music, and anything that's green or has the word "Guinness" written on it. Still many of the shops sell wool items such as scarves, sweaters, hats, gloves, and coats. These wool items are what Galway is known for because the primary commodity in the area is wool. This is because on the west coast of Ireland the soil and land doesn't permit the growing of crops as it does in the east. Therefore farmers have to raise sheep for either meat or clothing. Galway has become the principle city for wool in Ireland.

I got bought several things including a book for the bus ride. Since my bus didn't leave for until 12:30 I checked out of my hostel, which I absolutely hate. That hostel was not fun at all. I had a couple bad experiences with some of the people staying there. Anyway, enough about that. I then walked back out to the beach where my friends and I were on Monday just to pass the time and take in as much of everything as I could.

The weather was much like it was Monday morning; cloudy and a little windy. I just sat on the seawall and took some pictures. Quite a few people were walking their dogs along the beach. The dogs of course were only too happy to see me and visit.



At 11:30 I began walking back to the bus station to catch the bus to Monaghan. I waited at the station for about a half an hour until it was time to board the bus. The bus ride was about two hours to Athlone where I had a quick layover and then switched buses. The ride from Athlone to Monaghan was about another two hours arriving at about 6:00 PM. The countryside is very pretty and green! The sun had come out too by this time.

Monaghan (pronounced mona-han) is the county seat of Monaghan Co. Ireland. It's a farming community that has to be about the size of Dillsburg. It's a very quaint little town. However I soon realized that I had come at that wrong season for there weren't any tourist there at all. I'm pretty sure I was the only one. There are very few restaurants. They do have a shopping center and a hotel or two. The thing is that almost all of the activities to do in Monaghan are activities that require a car. Of course I didn't have a car because the age to rent a car is 23 or 25.

I walked from the bus station to my B&B which was literally on the other side of town and up a hill. However, once I got to the B&B I discovered that my hostess hadn't booked me for she had some kind of conflict or something. That wasn't a problem for she called some else she knew who also ran a B&B. Then she was even kind enough to drive me to the other B&B. This other B&B wasn't as nice as the one I had tried to book but it was ten times better than the hostel I had been at for the last four nights. So I wasn't complaining.

Since it was about dinner time I went to look for some food. I walked around town looking for somewhere and soon discovered that there weren't many places at all. I ended up eating at an Italian place which was very good. It was cheap too. The rest of the night I walked around taking some pictures of the town and the sunset. There's a Cathedral at the top of a hill just on the edge of town where I went and sat to watch the sun set.



It was a very low key day. I wasn't stressful at all and I was anxious to explore the town and the surrounding countryside on Thursday.