Day 1 Thursday: London -> Ballina

After about an hour delay at Gatwick airport we (Killian and myself) finally got onto the plane and headed off. Not long after we took off the pilot started talking about the flight to Shannon and the direction we would be flying which didn’t inspire us with massive confidence in his piloting skills considering we were meant to be flying into Knock.

Knock is fairly wierd for an international airport, it is literally a big shed with a big runway next to it. I would say it bears more relation to Port Maquarie airport than Sydney airport. The customs check involved a gruelling interview which went along these lines: Customs guy: Are you staying long? Me: No, just for a week Customs guy: Okay

Hrm. Intensive checks there. We picked up the car and headed off towards Ballina (Killian’s home town). Of course we had to stop off and have a pint at the local pub vincys. God damn that’s a nice beer, soooo much better than the nasty bitter Guinness I am used to. Killian seemed like he was dying of thirst, by the time I was a third of the way through mine he was already finished and ordering his second.

After a quick drive around we made our way to his mums house which is in a really beautiful country setting, complete with cows grazing at the fence just behind the house. After a fantastic dinner with bacon and cabbage and potatos we all relaxed in front of the tv for a while and headed off to bed reasonably early so that we could get on the road at a reasonable hour the next day.

Day 2 Friday: Ballina -> Galway

Killians mum was working on Friday but she still managed to get up early and cook us a massive full breakfast that was absolutely fantastic. By far the best breakfast I had the whole time I was in Ireland. Thanks Mrs Gallagher :)

The destination for the day was Killians cousins place in Galway but we wanted to take the scenic route out to Westport(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westport%2C_County_Mayo) and through Connemara(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connemara). After a nice drive through the countryside we made it to Westport for an early lunch. We were heading for a place that was recommended in the Lonely Planet guide that I had but we had our hearts set on some seafood and they only seemed to sell non-seafood which kind of sucked. So we headed over the road to a restaurant called the Asgard which turned out to be fantastic. I had a huge seafood platter with all sorts of good stuff on it. I can’t tell you how much I have missed eating decent seafood.

On the way back to the pub we passed Matt Molloys pub which is one of these classic pubs that appears on all the postcards of Ireland. More Guinness was consumed by all and then we took off again to do some more driving. It was a bit of a shame that the weather wasn’t a little better for the drive because the scenery was truly spectacular when the fog lifted. We made our way out towards Clifden(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifden) which the photos really don’t do justice to passing Kylemore Abbey(http://www.kylemoreabbey.com/) on the way there.

By this stage it was getting a bit late in the day and we were keen to get into Galway for some serious Guinness consumption so we took the less scenic roads and headed straight in for town.

Killians cousin Geraldine had offered us a place to stay for the night which was really great (Thanks Geraldine). You might notice there aren’t any photo’s of Galway. This is because most of the time there was spent drinking and I don’t generally take my camera when I am out for the night. After meeting up with some of Killians uni friends we headed off to one of the local nightclubs. To be honest the rest of the night is a bit of a blur so I wont even try to describe what happened.

I will finish the rest off when I am not so lazy