we were going to see J&K soon, we decided to wait and tell them in person. To this day, we like to joke about how we made them tell us all about London, then we told them about all the details of our trip – saving the engagement for last! I talk with my hands a lot and was getting really excited, so had to sit on my hands to not give anything away! To celebrate – Katie went and bought us all shots to kickstart the trip – here we go! We made our way to the train and the journey to Galway (about 3.5 hours) started.
When we arrived in Galway, it was raining and we had planned to walk to our AirBnb (highly recommend staying at this spot) – it wasn’t that far! We didn’t account for the wind – I’m sure plenty of folks were quite entertained seeing us walking through the streets of Galway, trying to use umbrellas, but the wind is blowing them apart, and then trying to figure out which way to turn to find our home……I think we all dropped our bags in relief when we finally got inside!
Everyone was a little worn out from the travel of the day (J & K had flown in that morning from London), so we decided to keep it a fairly mellow night.
We made the short walk back to the Latin Quarter of Galway (where most of the pubs are) and tried a handful of restaurants before finding Gemelles that could take us for dinner without a reservation. We had a great meal and then went across the street to 1520 for a quick drink. After that, we decided to get in our pj’s and hang at the house. We went and bought snacks, wine and Irish whiskey…….K&J bought Glendalough whiskey, not even knowing those were the mountains we had visited the day before! We played Go Fish, had a dance party enjoyed other games and drank the night away!
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| Late night shenanigans |
The next day was a big one – Jonathan’s 40th birthday pub crawl!! When we originally planned this trip, Jonathan had asked us to go to Kentucky with them to do the bourbon trail…..we asked instead how he felt about doing the Irish whiskey trail! So today was Jonathan’s day, whatever he 
wanted to do! In researching for the trip, we discovered that Galway has a whiskey trail, so part of the day's plan was to 'follow' it and go to as many of the bars as we could hit. The morning started with J&K going golfing early in the morning. Because Bryan and I aren’t golfers, we told them we’d meet up with them at lunch time and start the day…….we were told golfing was super cold and rainy – and they were some of the only people on the course! And they got two birdies on the course - woohoo!
At 1pm, we all met at Tigh Neachtain's for lunch and to start our day of drinking. Jonathan decided he wanted to try 40 Irish whiskeys for his 40th birthday (not all in one day) so we had some work to do! On this day he knocked a lot of those 40 whiskeys off the list, hence why we sprinted the marathon. We chose to do a lot of flights throughout the day and even a sip of a whiskey was counted on the list! Naturally, the day gets a little fuzzy as it goes on, so I’ll just list the bars we went to and let you decide if it’s a stop for you! Most of these pubs are within steps of each other so it is very easy to hop around,
Sonny Molloy's (which turned out to actually be the Front Door - they are connected)
Then the REAL Sonny Molloy's
Dinner at Trattoria Magnetti (the host lost our reservation that we had just made that morning)
The Quays - One of the best stops to make in Galway for live music
1520
Back to the Quays to end the night
We made a joke that day that someone always had the baton – whoever had the energy and was keeping the party going! With such a long day, the baton got passed a lot! At about 12pm, I finally said, you guys can call it, but this girl has to call it a night! I'm not 21 anymore! :) As we made our way back to the AirBnb, Katie was convinced she should go swimming in the mini waterfall that was in the courtyard of our home. It took a lot of work to keep her out of the water - that's what drinking whiskey all day will make you want to do.
Happy birthday, Jonathan!!!
