I like the driving, hate the road

So my day worked out pretty well I'd say. We woke up and walked around in Galway. It's beautiful multicultural little town, but there is nothing to fricken do there. So we chose to leave a little early, really not a bad call.

Since I was in charge of the plan today I got to pick where we were staying. Our choices were another hostel or little B&B in Grafton, the next big town after Galway. Or we could stay at in a little place Called Wits End in a little town called Roundstone. For some reason, I chose there and we couldn't be happier. But before I get to that, let me rant about the roads here in Ireland.

I don't know which jerk designed the roads around here, but they make no sense. Dad kept almost driving off the side of the extremely narrow roads just to avoid oncoming traffic. As if that wasn't hard enough... The Maps... Alright, let me break her down for ya. The don't have all the roads, the roads they do have aren't necessarily labelled correctly or at all, and they are very often not to scale. But even if the road was wide the maps made sense, the street signs still wouldn't always be there to tell you when to turn. Or if you're very lucky, the locals would have spray painted over the English part of the sign, leaving only the Gaelic. Now I know what you're thinking, “Matt, why not just ask the locals?” Well I would, and have. Big mistake. All of them seem to know where you're going, but none of them can seem to agree on how to get there. Plus, they always give you a length of time that is about half the actual travel time if they're overestimating it. The only thing they can all agree on is don't trust the map. If that all wasn't hard enough, the rain. Oh, it puts us to shame back home... How did my dad so poetically put it? “You know my boy. When it rains around here, it sure doesn't f**k around.” My dad, always the poet.

But now onto better things. Once we got through the Irish hell known as driving we made it to Roundstone somehow. Wits End is a lovely B&B that overlooks Bertraghboy Bay, giving us a beautiful view on the third floor of the house. It is a small town, so we ended up driving down to visit Graftden in the end. There wasn't an awful lot there either. Just a bunch of stores and churches. Still was a great little place to walk around for a few hours, but I wouldn't recommend you stay too long, all the buildings take away from the locations natural oceanside beauty.

Our very kind and very talkative hostess told us that if we made in back to Roundstone before 8:30 we had to check out the big weekly event of the local Tuesday music Festival. We had nothing better to do, so why not?

As it turns out, it was actually a great little performance. With all the local traditional Irish performers it was hard not to enjoy it. By all the performers I mean everyone from young boys who just stamped their feet on the ground and called it dancing, to a teenagers doing very quick and impressive Irish dancing, to elderly folks dancing and singing to the best of their abilities.

Roundstone is really a lovely little town. But it's a long way from our next destination and it's getting late. So I best be heading off. I believe dad and I are heading to Slago or something tomorrow... All I know is that it's in the County Mayo so I will be feeling homesick more than usual tomorrow.

I'll let you know where the heck we end up tomorrow when I can, assuming we end up somewhere with wifi.

-Matt