Continued from Westport Day 2.

So…woke up drunk this morning…as expected. It will not be fun getting in a car and driving around curvy roads all day…ugh. First, I had ordered some flowers through the hotel for RL’s bday today but they haven’t delivered them yet.

Went downstairs at around 10am to check on the flowers, and they haven’t arrived yet…so I came back to the room empty handed and had to explain to RL why I left the room.

Finally, the flowers arrive and it’s a much bigger bouquet than any of us had expected. Yesterday when I went to order the flowers at the front desk, I didn’t know how much to spend since I had no idea how much flowers cost around here. The guy suggested 50 Euros…that’s pretty steep, but I didn’t want to seem like I didn’t love my wife so sure. Well, I guess I got my money’s worth, and they even put it in a traveling water containers so that we could take it with us on the road!

I got a card yesterday, but didn’t find a chance to fill it out…so naturally, I filled it out in front of RL like a good romantic.

So hungover….must go get some food before I puke everywhere.

Found at the grocery store across the street. Yes, my body craves fried chicken!!

Sawing a lamb butt right in half.

Yum, hit the spot!!

Flower buckled up safety in the car. With these narrow curvy Ireland roads, gotta make sure it doesn’t tip over and pour water all over the car.

Of course, we managed to upload some Irish songs onto a SD card to play in the car.

Ugh….hungover and nausea. But the show must go on so onwards we drive. We didn’t make it out the door until after noon.

Of course, it starts to rain.

Such a beautiful country. This part of Western Ireland is less green than the North, but no less beautiful.

Amazing driving roads over here. I am really enjoying them, but not sure about my passengers who are hungover too.

Beautiful.

Same scene, but this time with the birthday girl feeling nausea from being in the car hungover. She managed to hold it together.

Essential Irish Drinking Songs. Nice.

Curvy and slightly bumpy roads. So much fun to drive on.

Had to dodge some sheep along the way.

Time for some gas. The car is a diesel, so I kept on reminding myself to pick up the diesel nozzle. What’s confusing is that in the US diesels usually have a green nozzle and gasoline black, but here it’s flipped.

In the gas station restroom.

Gassed up, let’s get going. Well…petroled up since we are in the UK.

Woah! Passed by Kylemore Abbey. Stunning.

I’d hate to drive one of those giant trunks on these little roads.

Reached our destination for our picnic lunch, Clifden castle. No car allowed beyond this point, so we gotta walk the rest of the way.

Dodge puddles of water along with puddles of cow poop. Just glad it’s not raining right now.

Almost there.

KL points.

I miss my dog.

It’s a castle, but really it’s a manor house ruin.

Not a bad spot to live.

For her birthday, RL wanted to picnic at a castle by the sea side, so here we go. More fried chicken for me, now in sandwich form.

No cake, so this tiramisu will serve as birthday cake! Yum.

I sat and relaxed…on my phone, while the girls went to explore around the castle.

Our lunch view.

Well, that was rather enjoyable. Time to head back to the car.

That’s a huge pile of bullshit.

This bee fell into one of the puddles.

I saved it with my foot.

Then JB got the bee off of my foot with a stick. Bee, we saved you, don’t sting us now.

Back on the road. That’s a very very tight squeeze!!

Restroom break for the girls while I waited in the car since I could just go anywhere out in the country here. Look at that two piece tractor wheel construction!

Castle ruin on a little island in the middle of the lake. Wow.  Its hard to see as this photo was taken from a moving car.  One of the down sides to these roads is that they don’t always have spots to pull over and take pictures when there’s something neat.  I guess the Irish are just so used to all these castles as they’re everywhere.

There are definitely more cars here in West Ireland vs. the North. I’ve had to pass quite a few people over here on the roads.

Then as we got close to Galway, there was so much traffic that it was pointless to try to pass.

Stuck behind the bus.

Reached Galway.

The streets are kind of hectic here. Lots of people jaywalking in front of your car. There’s also a lot more younger people here than the other places we’ve been in Ireland, other than Belfast.

It’s time to say goodbye to JB. We got into Galway and made straight for the bus station. She will be taking a bus to Shannon tonight and fly out back to Austin tomorrow. It’s been an awesome trip JB!! We’ll miss you and see you back soon in Austin!!

JB walks to the bus station, and we’ll be heading to our B&B. Galway is quite a lot bigger than the past few small towns that we’ve been in. We are missing the small towns already.

Parked in the back of our B&B.

This is what $88 a night gets you in Galway, about a 10 minutes walk from city center.

It’s funny, but the internet will only work well in certain places inside the room and not other places. I spent some time moving the computer around until finally finding a good spot on the bed…but only at the foot of the bed and no where else.

We were both so exhausted after drinking last night and all the driving today, we both fell asleep and took a deep nap.

Dinner time, gotta go out and get something to eat. Something within quick walking distance will do just fine.

Lots of B&Bs in this neighborhood.

Looks like there’ll be food ahead.

Seems like a good enough place for dinner.

Must eat greens!! It’s always hard to get enough vegetables while traveling. Dinner was pretty good, and it was a decent price as well. Galway seems to be a little cheaper than some of the other places that we’ve visited so far.

After dinner, we came back to our room to relax. It started raining, and it sounded so calming on our top floor roof…then RL let out a huge scream!! What’s going on? She pointed at the ground, and there’s a GIANT spider, about the diameter of a beer coaster, crawling around on our floor!!!! Holy Shit, that’s a giant spider!!!!

I was given the mission of killing it. It doesn’t look half as big crumpled up after I killed it with my shoe, but it was really really really big!!! It was also semi invincible as I had to smack it three times really hard with my shoe before it would die. Anyhow, seeing a spider this big put both me and RL, especially RL on super high alert. All of a sudden, we felt like there were spiders EVERYWHERE!!! I did a quick google search and apparently due to the hot and warm summers here this year, the Giant House Spider(I suspect that’s what this is) is now bigger than ever due to the nice weather. I was able to fall asleep, but RL spent the whole night half asleep freaked out about the spider, and she would wake me up periodically because she was scared…

To be continued at Galway Day 2.