Monday, October 6, 2014

The lightning and thunder woke me up early enough this morning that I was able to catch the sun rise over Galway Bay.

It didn’t take long for the rain to stop and once the clouds disappeared we could see it was going to be a lovely day. Our first task was to find the Town Hall Theatre and their ticket office. In our wandering yesterday we saw a poster for a play and thought it would be fun to experience some live Irish theatre. The play we are seeing is called Defender Of The Faith – “blackly comic and chillingly real”.

On the way to the box office we stopped for a view of Lynch’s Window. After we had our photos we were ready to move along but were stopped by an old Irish gentleman who asked if we knew the story. I knew it, but pretended I didn’t just so I could hear it from him.

Lynch was the first mayor of Galway. During those times the Spanish were delivering wine through the port of Galway. Lynch’s son and a Spaniard fought over a woman and the Spaniard was killed. Murder in those days meant hanging, but no one would take on the task of hanging Lynch’s son. A stickler for the law, Lynch hung his own son out of the window. The term “lynching” apparently comes from this story.

Once our tickets were bought we wandered through more of the side streets and found some interesting places. St. Nicholas’ Church has served congregations for more than 650 years – sometimes a Catholic place of worship and at other times a Protestant church. The only time it wasn’t used as a church was when Cromwell used it to stable horses – we are beginning not to like this Cromwell fellow!

I wanted to check out a couple of fabric shops and they were a big disappointment. The larger one had a bit of cotton fabric but it was very pricey. They also had a knitting and cross stitching section but there was nothing particularly “Irish” about any of it. I found the building the second shop was meant to be in, but there was no sign of the shop. We wandered into a sweater shop that had baskets of wool in the window. The wool was beautiful but, since most of it came from Donegal, I’ll wait a few days. Donegal is our next stop on the tour!

We found a restaurant for lunch (as opposed to a pub) and had a great meal. We had a bowl of soup and then shared some fish and chips and dessert. It is the first dessert I’ve had in Ireland and it was worth the wait. We shared a Bailey’s and Dark Chocolate Cheesecake; I eat way faster than Pat so I enjoyed more than my share!

We wanted to stop at the bus depot to check out some travel information. As we were nearing the station we passed a couple of old guys on the street and one of them said hello as we passed. I’m glad I turned around and said hello back; it was one of the fellows Pat talked to at the pub yesterday afternoon. Imagine running into someone you know in Galway City; but it really is that friendly a place!

We’ll get our packing done this afternoon before our theatre performance. We’re off on a four-hour bus ride first thing tomorrow morning.