Carrie comes to Galway

Hi Everyone, Ally here.

Ahhh what a great week:) (despite the fact that i am here at work on a saturday morning.... but even that is sweetened knowing it's my last saturday working:)

Carrie, aka 'I'm going overseas...', has at last made it:) Yep, I made the journey down to Shannon on Sunday and picked up a very jet-lagged and hungover Carrie. She decided to come and see us before heading to the austrian slopes and a europen contiki. After lots of chatting and catching up we investigated our sight-seeing options. This is where Carrie had a vey blond moment hehehehe. Whilst reading about the Burren - pic below - Carrie queried, "is that where the rabbits live?" .......



hmmmmm no wascally wabbits here....

We looked around Galway Monday and introduced Carrie to the Irish menu of everything 'with chips' - yup, carrie was stunned that chinese, indian, mexican... anything on a menu - could be ordered with chips. To emphasise our point, we took carrie to 'the chipper' and introduced her to garlic sauce and cheese 'with chips' and curry sauce 'with chips'. She loved them - although we all stank of garlic for the rest of the day - Dean and i then recalled why we eat these at 3am - after the pub.

After the chipper, we thought we should show carrie Galway Bay, so she could put her hand in and come back..... the Weather was adverse to this idea and tried to blow us away and then drown us. We surrendered and headed for the nearest pub (needless to say - carrie will now never return to galway, shame).

Now garlicked and frozen, Carrie and i headed to the bar. I ordered the drinks - onya Carrie for trying a Guinness, but really, half a pint??? Meanwhile Carrie was starring at me blankly - she had no idea what the barman had said to me..... was that english? Needless to say, i was reminded that the galway accent can take a little while to tune in to. I can't recall if she went anywhere near a barman after that.....

Feeling obliged to now show Carrie soime 'trad' music we headed for Tis Coili (pronounced she coal-ee). They have a 6pm session so we headed to get some good seats. 6:00... 6:30.... 7:00, ah the muso's turn up (irish time). They didn't disappoint, they did pause though, the barman had the flloor - to introduce Jerry. "Some words please Jerry", there were cheers from those who knew this fella from Tis Coili. So he stood from his seat by the muso's and started a few words - a few thought up earlier, just for a start. Then he looked around the bar, and noted the french and spoke it. Then noticed the camera on him, and spoke to it. He chose the characters and talked about all those around him, all silent - and if you weren't, you were quickly hushed. You see, when a man gets up to speak, all becomes silent in an irish pub - whether it be wise or drunken slurry, and Jerry, Jerry was a poet. The music returned when Jerry was done and not a moment sooner. A little later, another man was introduced. A man favouring his guinness, so we all hushed. He slurred between english and irish (gaelic) and poor carrie thought it might only be her stuggling to understand him - nope. Haven't a clue what this one was saying, but we all sat there quiet till the guinness hit his lips.

Come tuesday (Valentine's Day), Dean had to head to work but Carrie and i were on our way to Dublin. Carrie, discovering a hate of buses, was happy to train-it. So we took the train and Carrie saw just how green a place can be. I also showed her the cute black-faced sheep that are everywhere!

We walked our legs off in dublin on tuesday, seeing the main sites inc. trinity, guinness, churches etc. We then managed to catch up with my dublin buddy Julia:) We had a great night with a few bevvies.... pity about the scarey american men...

Before long we were back in Galway, with a happy sigh from both of us becasue we both prefer Galway:)

So we chatted some more and headed to the pub, as you do here.

Thursday, it was time for a sad farewell and a "please don't break your leg on the slopes" from me, before Carrie was off to continue her adventures and i was headed home to comfort Dean who is still sick and to personally shut up- because after 4 days with carrie, my voice is seriously struggling and i'm getting husky.

So that's all folks....

Seven weeks to go and a little less to my birthday:)

Slán
Ally

Initial plans...

So we're leaving here in April... Where are we heading?

So far we haven't looked too far into it (well, Ally has - but i've been a bit slack).

Anyway, our plans at the moment:

- Leave Ireland around the 10th April, head to Edinburgh
- Spend a week or so travelling around Edinburgh, maybe across to Glasgow
- Fly down to Brittany in France, look around Dinard and St Malo. Make our way across the coast to the D-Day beach landing areas, then through to Paris.
- Keep heading east and make our way into Luxembourg.

That's the basic plan at the moment. After that we've got vague plans of heading through Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany (possibly with a quick trip out to Moscow and St Petersburg), then down through Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria. Then work our way down through Italy, across the Greece, and finally to Turkey. Then spend a month or so travelling around Turkey.

After that - who knows - but we want to make our way across to India, and then a few places between there and home.

But... it all depends on how long the money lasts. Bring on the credit cards!

If anyone has any advice for ANY of the above please feel free to let me know!

Annoying Things About Banking In Ireland - Part 2

Receipts... you know the little pieces of paper that come out of the ATM when you've finished? Well... not many people in Ireland would know them.

ATMs come in three varieties:

A) The most rarest is the sort that asks if you would like a receipt, AND actually gives you one...

B) The second type of ATM politely asks you if you'd like a receipt, only for you to get to the end of the transaction and find that the ATM has just discovered that it isn't able to give you one after all... "Silly Me" it should say on the screen at the end. All this technology, and ATMs are unable to determine at the start of your transaction whether it can issue a receipt or not

C) The final type, and my favourite - are the ATMs with attitude. The ones who ask you if you want a receipt, you complete the transaction, and the ATM is too cool to even tell you that it can't issue you one... You're sitting there waiting to see if the ATM is Type A or B, only to find it asking you to insert your card - YOU'RE NOT GETTING A RECEIPT!

bloody ATMs... At least to be one of the 3 above types, it's actually working - which is a bonus

Annoying Things About Banking In Ireland - Part 1

Ok... i know banks back home in Oz are a pain in the butt and often very annoying, so a lot of these things i'm going to go through might apply back home... but...

We get really annoyed with banks and banking over here...

Fact #1 - ATMs 1
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I'll start with ATMs. Where are they?

If you ever need to find an ATM over here, just look for the longest line in view, follow it to the first person in line, and you've found an ATM. For some reason, there is a severe lack of them (unless you know about the hidden, unused ones at the basement level of a lot of the big department stores).

This more applies to Dublin where you can see ATM queues snaking their way all around the city - but our closest ATM here in Galway often has lines crossing the street... At least you can window shop while you wait I guess...

As an aside - often there will be 2 ATMs next to each other, however you're fairly guaranteed that only one of them will be working (it is amusing people coming up to the line, deciding that they don't want to line up with everyone else, so head straight to the front to use the unused one, only to find that it isn't working - derrrr. More on useless ATMs coming soon...