Galway

Tuesday morning we went on a tour of the ring of Kerry. Its about a 5 hour bus trip including all the stops in little towns or along the ocean/mountain range. It was really cool to see the mountains, they were a funny grey color but I guess thats because in August they will be all purple with heather. We also saw lots of sheep and dry stone walls. We also stopped at a little place with the old thatched roofs for a 10am Irish coffee. After the tour we went straight to rehearsal in Killarney and then had our concert. Unfortunately I seem to be sick and only sang about half of the night, there were two people sick before we came and now they have spread it to basically everyone.

Wednesday morning we head off to the cliffs of Moher and the Buren county. The buren is very rocky and basically the only thing they can do there is have sheep farms. The cliffs were pretty cool. We've been really lucky with the weather and it has only rained once and it was while we were singing and the days where we have had a lot of time outside have been really warm. After the cliffs we head off to the Aillwee caves. They were formed by an old underground river under the river aillwee, they were ok but the tour was not a long as we had expected but it was funny to watch the claustrophobic guy. Then off to Galway, we all went out to the pub for a little but but seeing as I am really feeling sick i went back pretty early.

This morning we were supposed to go bus to Bunratty castle at 8am, spend the day on the bus and then do our concert in a town outside of Galway. However seeing as we are all sick (largely due to the amount of time spent on the bus together) the whole choir opted out and spent the day sleeping and doing what we felt like in the city. We walked down to the ocean for a while today, then had lunch and went shopping for a bit. Tonight we are doing a benefit concert for some youth music project, it will be the last concert. And in the morning we are back to Dublin. Galway is very much a university town, the roads are really confusing too, trying to figure our if it actually a driving road or just walking but some of the seem to change at random times.

So couple things I've noticed, since I think this may be the last time before we get home
-no one here seems to work, it didn't matter where we were, at 2 in the afternoon on any the streets were packed
-also no matter what day it is at 1 in the morning the streets are still pretty full
-hotel rooms don't have alarm clocks, or any clocks at all really
-British tv is really horrible but they seem to have a thing for American Idol
-traditional irish breakfast is pretty gross and heavy and they like their meat (eggs, sausage, blood pudding, bacon, a whole tomato)
-a toastie is just a sandwich on toast
-everything costs the same as it does in Canada until you remember that the euro is worth over two and a half times as much as our dollar

So hopefully I'm feeling a little better tonight so I can go out, there are a few people leaving tomorrow morning to go off on their own travels so it will be last night with everyone here. We do still have the last night in Dublin though.