Rusty–I’m getting Galway and Limerick mixed up a little bit but Galway was where we stayed right next to the Latin quarter. Galway was a big city! We checked into our hotel and then we walked the Latin quarter late at night. So much music and so much energy. Really fun.
I was surprised when all the kids joined me for hotel breakfast. We loaded our bags in the car and were off to explore Galway. First stop, Josh found a screen repair place. He had dropped his phone on the hike in Wicklow park and completely shattered the screen. He was pretty sad about it and was looking forward to getting it fixed asap. I felt bad because I gave him a bit of a hard time about the price – thinking that he could have shopped around a bit.
From there it was the latin quarter with the kids. We were all together for awhile and then we decided to split up. Halle and Tara were looking at the special claddagh rings. It is a traditional Irish ring in which a heart represents love, the crown stands for loyalty, and two clasped hands symbolize friendship. I got a haircut and Josh and Blake went off exploring. Tara and Halle found a place with the most amazing fresh french fries and dipping sauce. The problem was, we didn’t arrange a meeting place afterwards and we couldn’t find Josh and Blake! We looked everywhere and they were super hard to find. The kids didn’t have cell service, so we hoped they’d wander into McDonalds or something and get on Wifi. Halle finally gave up and went to a bookshop. I must have walked the latin quarter like 10 times. Finally I spotted them in the distance, they had found a mall and were exploring and not worried at all about finding us.
After some lunch at Dough Bros (We ate a surprising amount of really good pizza in Ireland) it was time for the Galway Races. Everyone changed into their nicer clothes, some in the car and Josh even in the parking lot. We drove out to the race track and bought tickets and walked around. Time to place our first bet. This was my bet. I placed 10 pounds on the favorite horse to win. There were only like 7 horses in this one so the odds weren’t as big, like 2.7:1. But we won! So I won 17 pounds. The kids were impressed. Then they all put bets on different horses in following races but we never won again 🙁 Josh was excited to place his first bet when he was only 16 and you were supposed to be 18. He thought that was pretty cool. IN between races there was dancing and line dancing that was a lot of fun. It was just a super fun time and everybody was really enjoying it. We had a great Wednesday afternoon. It’s always great to have a new experience.
That evening we drove to our “Glamping”. We didnt’ really know what to expect in this one. Turns out it wasn’t like Tent glamping, it was in an old estate building buillt in 1500 and renovated enough that people could stay in it. So we had 5 twin beds with pink covers in a very tiny room. We had stopped by Lidls and got all the things for dinner. We ate at the small round table. Each night Halle would nicely ask to use my hotspot so she could save her snapchat streaks. We had picked up some playing cards so that after dinner we could teach the kids poker. After a few rounds Josh had won all our gummy cola’s and watermelon softies. Darn Josh cleaned up! Then we just huddled in our beds and went to sleep in pink fluffy goodness.
