Galway Day 2: Macnas parade & new friends

Like day 1, day 2 was not what I expected at all when I thought about my trip beforehand. I woke up to Lauren’s phone going off for about 2 minutes while she searched for it, and decided to get up and get breakfast. When they got up they invited me to go to harry potter with them. With that I made plans to catch them later and was off. I went and checked out 4 different bicycle shops, all of which were closed on Sunday but at least I knew where they were now.

Afterwards I had a heavenly crêpe from Zatsúma filled with Connemara meat & cheese. If I could live on 3 things in life, Chipotle may be for dinner and Zatsuma for lunch… maybe a solid Irish breakfast for breakfast and I’d probably die around 45 with heart failure, but it may be worth it. I’d forgotten how real the stories were I told about it raining every half hour, as during the bike search it poured and cleared up, and then while walking shop street munching on my crêpe it did so again!

So I went back to my old volunteer job, the amnesty international café & shop. I had a coffee and saw Anna for a bit there, it was really good to see her again, and surprising since I hadn’t thought any of the old workers would still be there. Then I spent the afternoon in Eyre Square reading Tolstoy.

Upon arriving home at my hostel I met my new roommate “Graziella”, a german girl (pictured), who had an Italian name that I butchered about 8 times before she explained it was said like ‘thanks’ in Italian, and to make her even more of a euro-mix she spoke the queen’s English, accent & all. Her friends had left the day before so I asked her out to dinner. We ate outside on the Corrib, and despite it being a little chilly (IN JULY!) it was great to meet her.

I had plans to meet susan later at Salt house pub for a drink before the Macnas Parade, which if you read my blog last year you’ll remember as the crazy arts parade. So we headed off and saw some cool street fair stuff, a goodband that we watched for a bit, and an 'unrideable bike' that you won 20euro if you could go 10ft. Fun to watch everyone screw it up but the owner who made it look so easy.

I invited Graziella to the pub and we met susan and her coworkers & friends there (pictured). That was a ton of fun hanging out with them, and I had a “Galway Hooker” for the first time in 11 months, what a great beer. (Left to right: Rita, Graziella, moi, Susan, Marie.)

Then we were off to the parade & for drinks afterwards, and I’ll let the pictures tell the story here: