Aaron’s Completely Terrible Ireland Travel Blog

Day 2

A good 7-hour sleep the first night was just what I needed to be ready to go on day two.

We started our day with some local eggs and sausages we got at the local market. Quite good.

Off we went to Eyre Square to meet our walking tour of old Galway. While a pretty uneventful tour overall, there were some interesting tidbits. One being that Galway ( by European standards) isn't very old. Built in the 13th centry if I remember correctly. It's always enjoyable to take a walking tour just to get a feel for the layout of the city if nothing else.

For lunch, we got the best fish and chips at the city of McDonagh's. Quite good and some of the best battered fish i've ever had.

In the afternoon, we relaxed a bit back at the Airbnb before heading back out to find a pub. We walked into M.P. Walsh, and I had my first pint of Irish Guinness. It is different here for sure. A little less bitter IMO and obviously not served cold. Then I had as many Irish Whiskeys I could fit in before dinner at 5:30. I only had ones that were local and I'd never seen before. Not a bad one in the bunch.

More dinner we ate at a Michelin-recommended wine bar called Balrog. While I'm not a wine guy, their selection was tremendous, and the wine I did have was good. The food, however, was why I was there. It's all small plates, which is nice when you just want to try everything you can. The winner for me was a Monkfish plate with a beurre blanc sauce and mussels. It was OUTSTANDING! For my wife, it was the polenta cakes. They were awesome as well. Overall, everything was good, and some were incredible. Bill was about 125 euros, which wasn't bad given we also had 3 glasses of wine between us.

After dinner we had to walk it off a bit and just wandered around the city, before heading back to the Airbnb.