I’ve decided—you can’t be a vegetarian in Ireland! August 21st, 2006

I have decided that it would be nearly impossible to be a vegetarian in Ireland. Nearly every day we have been fed a “Full Irish Breakfast” which consists of meat, eggs, meat, and you’ve guessed it—more meat! And this is coming from a girl whose favorite food is steak! It really consists of eggs, sausage, bacon (more like what we think of as ham, black and white “pudding”, and usually tea or coffee. The lady at the B&B kept asking Sheri and I if we wanted any tea or coffee. After politely declining every time she asked, I think that she finally got the point. It seemed like Sheri and I were the only people on the entire island that didn’t drink tea or coffee! Although, we certainly did drink more than our fair share of orange juice!
Today was our last day on the Aran Islands, with our ferry scheduled to depart at noon. So we got up early and decided to explore the island some more. Sheri had already done a fair bit of exploring; however, this was my first jaunt across the island. We rented bikes, and set off. Unfortunately, the island is very hilly, and after a couple of miles, I was dying!!! I was not quite better, and my lungs were burning. Sheri was feeling very driven to make it to Dun Aengus, but according to the nice guy at the bike stand, we would only have time to get there and make it back to our ferry if we rushed. I tried! I really did! But riding a bike uphill was a little too much for me, so I let Sheri go ahead and I decided to explore another fort, one that was a little closer. Apparently, it had been the lighthouse for the island because it is the highest spot on Inish Mor, but they found that it was too far inland to really be effective as a lighthouse, and moved the lighthouse to the coast. However, it did still function as a fortress for a while, and as it was the highest spot on the island afforded some great views! Well, I sped down the hill in enough time to return my bike, and look around the village some more. Unfortunately, Sheri was nowhere in sight!!! I got our luggage and took it to the ferry (not an easy feat mind you with two very large bags!), but I still didn’t see her. It was noon and the ferry guys kept telling me that they were about to leave! Well, right as they were pulling the plank away from the dock, Sheri comes riding up on her bike! Fortunately, they said they would take the bike back for her, and they let us come aboard, but it was literally in the nick of time! I was worried that we wouldn’t make it, and I wasn’t sure if we missed that ferry if that would also make us miss our plane to Scotland! I was grateful that I had lagged behind so I was able to keep the ferry from leaving!!
After a fairly uneventful ferry and bus ride, we found ourselves in Galway! Because of the fact that the ferries didn’t run very often, we found ourselves with plenty of time to walk around and explore Galway. This was the first European city we had actually been in, and it was so much fun just walking around! We had lunch in this park, and just watched all the people. We also got to feed these swans, and it was cute because this little girl came up with her family, and I gave her a slice of our bread. And all the swans were fighting for the bread with smaller, but quicker ducks. Wow, isn’t it great to be amused by the simple things in life?
We also saw our first cathedral. What I love about the relationship between Sheri and I is that we see something in the distance that interests us, and we go find it! We discovered that as far as sightseeing and especially museums, we have very similar paces. Which is sooo important!!! And it was nice because we didn’t have to spend a long time places, but could appreciate them and move on. We saw this green dome in the distance while we were coming into Galway on the bus, and we just walked around till we found it! It was really fun, and we got to see quite a bit of the city in the process. Unfortunately, we didn’t have more than a few hours in Galway before we headed to the airport. I think that when we went to get a taxi to the airport and they asked “which airport?” we should have realized what we were getting ourselves into at the Galway airport!!!