The day that would start in uncertainty that we had come to terms with. Even though there were some spots we had picked out to wild camp tonight, we still wanted to give the two camps in Galway City a last shot. Much to our surprise, the first of the two adjacent camps would actually sell us an utterly overpriced city camp tent spot without power – cash, obviously. Ah, how we had missed city camps and their greedy owners. Turned out later, comfortably racist comes with the package as well …
At any rate, we set up the camp and were ready to take the bus to town. Much to Number 3’s delight, it turned out to be a double decker bus! With us arriving a bit close to lunch time, we re-arranged our plans a bit and went for a closer more casual recommendation. It ended up being a burrito bar – not a bad pick. The food was solid, quick enough for the kids and reasonably priced. Now all we had to do was to convince the Agent of Entropy that it was naptime in the carrier.
Oh, right – not so fast. We had to go on one more de-tour before starting the actual touristing: Buying wetsuit repair goop (I’ll get to why in a second). On our way there, we passed the local gaming nerd den and just had to go in for a brief browse. It was called Dungeons & Donuts, and it actually delivered on both. Gaming was going on upstairs and there were real donuts to be had for the inclined gamer to absorb. Unfortunately, anything bought would have to be carried, so we left again to get to the actual errand. The goop was needed to keep both Nina’s and my own pair of main walking shoes from falling apart before the end of the holiday. The silicone goop is perfect to fix the soles of our super thin barefoot shoes, where they were wearing precariously thin. It would be likely quite hard to find good replacements without a major quest. Given that we opted for the newly acquired (and extremely appreciated) barefoot gumboots as our 2nd pair of shoes instead of a backup, it was kind of important to keep us going (I ended up repairing all shoes as my final deed of the day – the rest of Ireland can come).
With all that out of the way, we were ready to get on with the sightseeing. A wander down Quay Street led us to the weekend market around St. Nicholas church. The Agent was asleep by now, but was almost woken up after we had arrived back on Quay Street, a bit unsure about where to go next: We were ushered out of the way and moments later ended up right in Galway’s Pride Parade! Good on you everyone – it was all smiles and rainbows, really cool to see. Only Number 3 took Umbridge with the volume of the whistles used to make some noise. A shame, otherwise the rainbow theme and Pandemonium should have been totally his thing.
With that literally out of the way, we pocketed some minor sights on our way to the city museum. Number 3 was totally hyped up about it. I am so proud! The museum was free, a nice change of pace, and air conditioned (believe it or not, an actual benefit on this day). Near the end, the Agent of Entropy was done with her nap and soon after we were out in the sun and afternoon heat (yes, almost 30°C) once more.
Coffee time with treats was followed by a good long walk along the river and canals. We were debating staying in town for dinner, but slowly settled on a beer as a scene setter and quick dinner at camp. Before though, we had to bag Nina’s point of interest: The Hazel Mountain Chocolate Shop. On goes our quest to visit a chocolate-related venue in every country we travel to. Some great treats and a shelf-stable takeaway goodie later, I had one more idea to fill the afternoon: There was a recommended book shop basically right next door. I wanted to add to our English bedtime stories collection anyway while we were in Ireland, and this was an option to maybe even find a local author.
We did find just that in “Imagine!” by Galwegian Partricia Forde plus a special request from Number 3: “Don’t Ask the Dragon”. What a cool and cosy place, stacked floor to ceiling with all kinds of books, from Antique to local Crime Fiction.
We abandoned our idea of a final pub visit – it was a bit awkward with the kids and no live music to be found yet at this time. Instead, I got to try out a local Bodhrán (my German-made one sounds better for half the price) and everyone got ice cream for dinner. The trip back home took a bit longer than needed due to some odd bus routing, but we got back just in time for the tent to have cooled down enough to get both kids to bed with enough time left for blogging and chores.
What a packed day …
