Galway Girl here we come!

FYI "Galway Girl" is a popular Irish song that we have heard many times now! Just seems appropriate :-)

Kelly made coffee and we relaxed in our room prior to breakfast. Same cloudy, rain filled skies this morning unfortunately. See a trend here!

We are doing a little bit of planning on the fly as we had done none prior to the Galway portion. We looked at some airB&B's around the area and found a nice one up in Cong for the 22nd & 23rd. (This is the place that the movie "Quiet Man" was filmed many years ago and also home to Ashford Castle. It's a bit old... first built in 1228)

We headed downstairs for our full Irish breakfast.. again.Kelly filled out a post card for Lauren and we planned the route to the B&B in Galway. (Route planning via google maps to Galway(via N67 then N18 then N6)

Enjoying our morning coffee. Irish breakfast on the way!

Texted with Kris as he is boarding his flight back to Victoria via Toronto & Vancouver. All good with his flights.

We departed at 0:27 and had a wet drive around the various bays and towns that dot the coastline via Ballyvaughan, Bealaclugga, Kinvarra, Kilcolgan, Clarinbridge and Oranmore to Galway. Couple of nice churches that we planned to stop at but being Sunday they were pre-booked :-)

Once in Galway (Salthill area) we went to find the B&B and parked out front at 11:55. Pretty good time considering we didn't rush and the weather was crappy. I set up the car gps as "home" and because our chekin time was 2PM, we went for a nice drive out west to see the area.  The beach area is very close and we quickly found our dinner spot Da Robertas this evening! The dinner is with Paul Houlihan, former Team Manager of the Irish F3A Team that I met in Muncie, IN years ago at the Worlds. Easy 5 minute walk for us.

The weather is not great with 15 knot winds and continuous rain coming down. We headed west to Spiddal West and checked out the wee town. We stopped out on the pier that had no docks, just the boats moored for the tidal flow. Much different from what we see at home.  A return back towards Galway with s stop for lunch at a Padraicins Seafood Bar & Restaurant. The seafood chowder was excellent along with the smoked salmon salad. High Recommendation from us!

The port in Spiddal. Boats are rear roped to a pulley and pulled in to access.

Our ride for the week.

After lunch it was back to the airB&B in Salthill to unload our luggage. We met Suzie the proprietor and her daughter Emma and quickly settled in to the room. It's a large room with a huge window looking out onto the street with a double bed, separate shower and a toilet in a room next door. It will work well for us. The internet is ballistic here! Only dream of this back home!

Can't complain about internet speed here!

We went for a walk down to the main shopping area of Salthill with its many casinos. FYI We did not know about the Casinos!!  As this is a summer tourist "meca" the casinos are here to extract money from the tourist crowd.

We grabbed a few items for the room and headed back to relax. Showered and ready we headed off to the  Oslo Pub to meet Paul and his wife Ros for a drink

Paul and I get caught up.... Irish style!

After introductions we had a drink and delved into conversation. Lots of RC stuff as well as local spots of interest for our travels and explorations over the next few days. Dinner was across the street at Da Robertas and it was fantastic. We had a great evening learning of Ros's new found family and Paul's RC exploits. ( I know where his RC field is so hopefully a stop in on Tuesday!)

It was great to get caught up and always nice to see people that are local but you also have a previous connection with. We hope to reciprocate the visit if they ever get to the west coast of Canada sometime.

One last stop at O'Conners (our band-mates would love this place!) for a drink then a quick 5 minute walk home and it was into the rack. A great day all round.

(Also texted with Kris... in YYZ now and on the 16:10 flight to YVR ....sitting in a big seat of course!