"You can dance if you want to... you can leave your friends behind"

Been a busy couple of days-- two festivals in full swing, new (courteous!) roommates, and yes, I broke the dryer again :(

But let's begin at the beginning.

Finally got to check out McCambridge's, sort of the "Eataly" of Irish purveyors/restaurants/cafes. Mizzuble rainy day 'twas! So naturally had a great chowder and and a salmon fillet.

Yes, for the keto followers here, I didn't eat the potatoes gratin, and it's celeriac instead of potatoes in the chowder.

For those who haven't been to Galway, the main drag is Shop Street, which is full of shops (as you'd expect), but also buskers, tourists, and apparently random gatherings called "silent discos", but I thought this was more of a flash mob. See below:

I still have no idea what that was about. Anyhow, since the rain was letting up, I decided today would be a right fine time to book that "Corrib Princess River Cruise" I've heard so much about. So at 4:30, I was booked for a mere 15 bucks on the sailing. Well, a couple painful realizations for me:

i) "Sailing" does not mean that there are sails... it's just your standard motorboat.

ii) The horrible, circuitous walk I underwent the other day covered *nearly* all of the sites on the cruise... but at least I got to hear commentary about what I saw?

Anyhow, here's some pictures... some of which are familiar if you follow my blog.

I'll talk about the new, least interesting one on the right. Gotta love tour guides-- "us locals call it the Iodine Wall". Why? Well, we thought people were digging for iodine behind it. Turns out though, there's no record of that ever really happening. So instead, we think it's just an L-shaped wall that's called that because "iodine" sounds like some irish word for harvesting something from the river. #irishfacts

Anyhow, you should know that the Corrib river flows all the way from Lake Corrib (I'm not spelling it "lough", but i should). And we got out and cruised the lake a bit, and got to hear about our captain's alleged archaeological finds like axeheads and arrowheads, but given the #irishfacts nature of his previous stories, I took this with a very large grain of salt.

Also got to see some swans and cygnets on the trip though!

"Stop Looking at me Swan!"

Anyhow, this was a perfectly lovely way to spend an afternoon. Had a few drinks with my new roommates when I got back, seem perfectly nice, confessed to breaking the dryer again... all I'll say about that is if a dryer can break because you leave one coin in your pocket of your pants... I should probably not be using that dryer.

I'm going to gloss over my dinner, because it's only going to make me angry. What I will advise any Galway visitors is if you see a restaurant called Rouge and think "hey, it's the only place open right now, I'll go eat there", don't do it unless you enjoy the worst service, awful music, awful wine, and some of the most flavorless food around that's overpriced. Let's just call that a Yelp review and leave it there.

So... it's a new dawn, it's a new day, and Sam set out to the market to get some sausages. There's an amazing butcher in Galway that only does pork, and supplies all the major restaurants. They really tried to sell me on the "coffee maple streaky [American-style] bacon", but I was not to be deterred from the sausage.

Not my picture, and they actually had way better stuff when I was there today

Cooked up some lovely Smoked Chipotle sausage and veggies at home for lunch... them's good eatins! And it's great to not be eating out all the time.

Perhaps boringly, I spent the afternoon buying new socks and... essentials. By essentials, I mean underwear, and let me share a fascinating fact with you-- in Ireland, they call boxer briefs "hipsters"! I infinitely prefer this definition of the word to the annoying American association.

After that, I just read next to the canal for a while.

Not sure if everyone sees the weird hippie who smells like Otto's jacket in the background

Made some real progress in Cutting for Stone, the book that has a lady grab a Frenchman's testicles then deliver "Siamese" twins within about 10 pages of each other.

Got back to the house eventually-- 2 cool things tonight!

1) Music at The Crane Bar

If you like locals, very hot upstairs bars, and people casually sitting around and slaying their interests and pints simultaneously... you'll love The Crane Bar!

2) "Sing Along Social"

"not for the craictose intolerant" is yet another example of how I need to work craic into my everyday lexicon more

I went from "super excited" to "this looks like a cruise ship audience" to "once again thrilled" as I visited the Galway City Rowing Club for this. First, before any of the singing and dancing started, you could go out on the deck and enjoy the sites and sounds from the big top as the Villagers and John Grant played across the river

*Almost* worth not paying for this concert to mooch from across the water.

But eventually, you hear the joyful dissonance and clumsy enthusiasm from the many Irish inside, and you're tempted. Here's a sample of the kind of action you're seeing inside.

Ahhhh... takes me back to District Karaoke days, where you scream your heart out and dance badly.

After maybe 90 minutes and not winning any of the fake awards they gave for bad singing and dancing, I left and went home. This was a pretty good couple of days!

Goodnight Galway! I'm still not used to "this is what the sky looks like at 10:30 p.m."

Random Things:

-If I somehow manage to steal one of these festival wristbands, I can save 10% on all future tickets... time to convince my German roommate to steal me one...

"I am the king of wishful thinking"

-Two wonderful and different whiskeys, if you ever go across the sea to Ireland, are Connemara and Writer's Tears. If anyone loves whiskey and is a writer and doesn't mind the concept of mentally drinking their own tears... holla at your boy and happy to grab you a bottle.

I'm on board with this. Sounds like gazpacho.

Moment of Zen