It Was Very Good of Me

(8/3) Friday -

Friday we crawled out of bed and headed down to breakfast.  By now, my lack of more than 4-5 hours of sleep had really caught up to me, but since I didn't want to hold up the group or miss out on anything, I got my butt moving.  While at breakfast, the cutest little girl came strolling out of the toilets (they don't say washroom here) and walked up to her mom with a big smile on her face.  She then said "I went to the toilet all by myself.  It was very good of me."  With her accent, maybe Scottish or British (I'm not good at deciphering accents). It was the cutest darned thing we'd heard.  Brendan, Elise, Brian and I cracked up laughing because she was so sweet and excited about going potty on her own.  It's the little things.

We spent a little over an hour strolling around Westport, going through the various shops, checking out the town, etc. and then we packed up and got back on the road for the long drive to Ennis, with a planned stop in Galway.  Along the way, Mrs. Dite suggested that we exit earlier than planned, but wouldn't tell us why.  She directed us into a little town called Cong, where The Quite Man was filmed.  Growing up, I think I probably saw The Quiet Man 100 times too many.  In my family, if a John Wayne movie was on TV, we watched it . . . even if half the family could recite the movie because we'd seen it so many times.  So visiting the town where Quiet Man was filmed was quite cool, just don't tell my dad I said so.  We stopped in the shop dedicated to the movie and I bought a few things.  By this time, it was pouring outside, so we hightailed it back to the car and got back on the road to Galway.

Once in Galway, we headed for the city center where all of the shopping is.  Elise was on the hunt for a claddagh ring and I just like to shop.  I found a necklace that I really liked in the very first shop we stopped in, so Brian bought it for me. We browsed a few more shops, but the rain started to pick up and we were getting hungry for lunch (it was 4:00) so we found a restaurant and took shelter long enough to fill our tummies. During lunch, we had a great view of the main street through the city center so we were able to do a lot of people watching.  We kept seeing women in dresses, heels and fancy hats and men in suits and ties.  At first we thought they were business people, but it turned out the had actually been at the Galway races.  Horse racing is very big in Ireland. 

After lunch, we did a little more shopping and then got back on the road to continue our trek to Ennis. We checked into our hotel and then Tim, Brendan, Brian, Elise and I walked around Ennis, checking out several of the pubs along the way.  The first pub we stopped in had Smirnoff mojitos on tap.  Yes, on tap.  So I switched from Guinness to mojitos. It was very good of me!