Weeknote 12

Irish road trip continued, Irish dining and birthday celebrations

Another bumper weeknote this time round, with the past week spent exploring Ireland's Atlantic Coast with my parents.

City of Galway

Beginning the week we spent the day exploring the City of Galway under somewhat damp weather conditions. In need of a caffeine fix and to escape the rain, we went in search of a decent coffee shop. The Little Lane Coffee Company is small, but cosy and has probably the best coffee in town from what we tried. After taking in Galway's touristy hotspots, including the Catholic Cathedral, we headed for a delicious light lunch at Tartare where I'd the Durrus cheese and creamed leek sourdough toasty.

Atlantic Coast

The Weather Gods made good work of ensuring my birthday on Wednesday had the perfect conditions of warmth and sunshine. We spent the day exploring Ennis and the West Coast of Ireland, taking in the spectacular Cliffs of Moher. That evening for my birthday celebratory meal, we had the most beautiful of locations to dine out at in The Pier Head, Kinvarra.

Lough Derg

The following day we endured spells of rain with brief intervals of sunshine for much of the day. Lough Derg was a delight in spite of the damp conditions, and still clearly visible from a distance. We stopped by for lunch in Nenagh at the The Pantry Café where I enjoyed a generous portion of chips, salad and freshly made salmon fish cakes. On our journey back to our Airbnb we encountered traffic of the mooing variety, thankfully with some encouragement from the farmer and his Collie dog, they pulled over to let us through after just a five-minute hold-up!

Limerick

For the final day of our road trip, we headed straight down the motorway, so new it was missing from our car's GPS, for just over an hour to Limerick on the beautiful River Shannon. It's Ireland's third city and certainly felt much more city-like compared to Galway City, with its grand Georgian terraces and grid road layout, rarely seen in much of Europe. Toasties are quite the trend for most Irish café menus, and Limerick's Sodalicious had a fairly good choice of options, although somewhat lacking many vegetarian/vegan choices.

Overall, I loved the past week exploring Ireland and for the most part we had very dry weather, which is a rarity for Ireland!