Day 2

DAY TWO!!!! After getting a semi-good night sleep last night our CEA group was up and ready to explore at 930 this morning. Our director took us to our school and we had an informal orientation, then took a little tour of the campus. They showed us where our classes were, and a few other important buildings. I'm not sure that I'll be able to find where our classes are again, but hopefully someone has a better memory that I do who can help me on my way.

After that our director took us for a tour of the city, and showed us some of the main attractions. Some of the stuff that we saw, that there arent any pictures of below were: Nora Barnacles house (she was James Joyces wife), the Lynch window (where one of men from the 12 tribes of Galway had to hang is son for making eyes at some other tribesmens girlfriend...thus coining the term "lynch"), Saint Nicholas' Church (not to be confused with St. Nicholas' Cathedral, otherwise known as Galway Cathedral), and thats pretty much it, or all that I remember anyway. It was a long day...walking around from 9:30 till 3:30 or so, but now I know the lay of the land and will be able to, hopefully, find my way around.

Tonight we are going to dinner at a local place, and then maybe a couple of us are going to go pubbing after. We shall see. Enjoy the pictures!

This is the ceiling inside of St. Nicholas' Cathedral...it was really amazing.

This was the best picture that I could get that got the whole cathedral in one shot. The whole place was breathtaking and amazing, but it is apparently only several decades old. There was a bunch of stain glass windows and they were really beautiful with the sunlight coming through.

This is part of the river Corrib, and that man in there is fishing for salmon, there were a few men down there fishing when we were there, but apparently the time to see them is at 5am.

This is a little canal and that bridge in the distance is the Salmon Weir Bridge.

This is Shop street in the city centre, it is the main pedestrian shopping lane, but cars can go down it as well. There are a bunch of cool shops and places to eat, there are also a lot of street performers just standing there singing or playing a guitar.

This is the Spanish Arch (and a man taking a nap!) our director was giving us a brief story about it, and I have read about it, but for the life of me I cannot remember its story or the history behind it.

And finally, this is the part of Galway that is referred to as, The Claddagh, made famous by the claddagh ring, of course. In its hay day there were white washed houses with thatched roofs, and the women would stand along the pier there (nimo's pier) and sell what their husbands had caught that day.