Day 26: Kylemore Abbey and Galway

Came down to the kitchen to write about yesterday but forgot my camera in my room, so I'll have to add pictures for this post later. As suggested by the title the two big stops yesterday were Kylemore Abbey and the city of Galway.  Kylemore has an interesting history of love, prosperity, gambling, and nuns (not all at once) that I won't go into detail on.  Unfortunately we had to pay to go in, and most of the abbey is blocked off so it was a bit of a disappointment.  We took the shuttle bus to the walled gardens nearby, but it wasn't very exciting either - probably largely due to the time of year.  We walked through the woods back, and that was probably the most interesting part of the site.  At least the scenery was nice.

After some more driving we got to the city of Galway on the west coast. Galway is a pretty lively music scene apparently, and a higher number of gaelic speakers, so a lot of history and tradition in the city.  We met up with another tour group who we'll be joining with for the next 2 days along the coast, and after a few hours checking out the many shopping areas in the city we met up at an irish pub for dinner.  Like most of the pubs around they have live music all evening, and the group of us that have been around Ireland a bit now were pleased to discover we now knew a good number of the traditional songs that were played and could sing along.  I only stayed out until maybe 12:30 even though the others kept bar hopping because I'm still trying to take things easy until I can get over this unfortunate cold.