Tuesday, April 29th

Galway.

We all slept hard. We've been on the move since we got here. Maybe trying to see whole country of Ireland in four days was a stretch.

We welcomed having a low key day. We visited Key Street in Gallway. It's a beautiful pedestrian only street lined with shops, cafes and people busking (playing for money). It was glorious. All the store fronts are a different color, so many people and languages.

My goal for the day was to purchase another Cladaugh ring. My mom had gotten one for me when she was here in 1995, but the band snapped. The first store I went in didn't have the correct size. They sent me to Thomas Dillons. I came to find out that Thomas Dillon has the rights to the original Cladaugh design. It's been around for 264 years. I knew Cladaughs were from Galway, but I didn't know the rest.

After shopping for a bit in Galway, we made out may across Ireland to Dublin (it only takes 2 hours to cross the entire country). We stopped to fill our BMW with diesel and 90 EURO later we were back on the road. Fun Fact, it said we could go another 756 miles on our tank of gas.

Now it's time to leave the Emerald Isle and head for the Highlands and a bit of a slower pace. I noticed on out itinerary that our plane is a TurboProp. What does a TurboProp look like ?

Our flight was pretty uneventful. The flight attendant was very sweet. I purchased something on the plane and used a credit card to pay for it. She borrowed a pen from another flight attend for me to sign the slip. Little did she know that I was carrying 14 pens with me. I'm not sure why I'm hoarding pens. Anyway, I signed the slip with my pen and told her to keep my pen because I had 13 others. She was so touched by it. Then my sister, who brought Minnesota pens for us to leave at B&B's where we stay, said we should give a MN pen to her. We did and explained that MN is where we're from. She was so touched that she gave us each a candybar. Then later she came back to tell us she didn't want to use the pens for fear she'd lose them and theiir so special....

It's amazing how far a little kindness can go.

We landed in Scotland and all four of us seemed to have renewed energy. This is the country none of us have visited. 

Tonight we're staying in Kinross, just north of Edinburgh. Tomorrow we're off to Balmoral Castle and Isle of Skye. We'll drive through the Highlands and along Loch Ness. Maybe we'll see Nessie?!