Ballyvaughan

The morning after we arrived in Dublin we packed up our stuff once more and headed on down the road. The first trick was to figure out which bus was ours- a helpful Irishman stepped in and showed the way. The bus driver was super friendly- asked us where we were going and what we wanted to do there and made comments on the weather in Dublin vs. that in Galway. It seemed like he chatted with the passengers up in the front of the bus the whole three hour ride from Dublin to Galway!

So, we rode the bus for 3.5 hours and arrived in Galway 45 minutes later than we were supposed to, which meant we missed our bus to Ballyvaughan. This gave us a little time to tool around Galway, though we were somewhat hindered by our packs. It's hard to look around a shop when your backside extends an extra few feet. So the short story is we didn't see much other than the inside of the bus/train station.

When it was time for us to catch the bus we went outside to find ourselves in the midst of utter madness. No one knew where they were supposed to stand or which bus they wanted! Of course this made me doubt if I had the right stop(I did) so I joined the confused milling around for a bit, but in the end it all got sorted out and we got on the bus to Ballyvaughan.

The ride from Galway to Ballyvaughan took a few years off of my life. There aren't any highways in this part of the country. The roads here are not really quite wide enough for two cars to pass each other without one of them driving onto the (barely existent) shoulder yet the bus driver just barreled down the middle of the road at 500mph. It was like we were living inside of one of those car racing video games, and the player controlling our car was a two year old!

Finally, a little green around the gills, we arrived in the little village of Ballyvaughan and at the B&B Meadowfield, where we spent the night. We took a little walk around the village after depositing our things, got our first taste of the charming Irish scenery, and came to really appreciate the phrase "small town". Ballyvaughan is one of the bigger towns we've been in since leaving Galway and the grocery store there could barely be called a convenience store in the states.

In any case, our bed was comfortable, our hostess was agreeable, there was a hot shower and in the morning a delicious breakfast. Who could ask for more?