DAY TWENTY-ONE: AROUND GALWAY

Here's how your plans go south:  sometimes it's a big deal, an argument, equipment failure, second thoughts; sometimes, it's no deal at all, almost imperceptible, a casual comment or question, posed in the late morning while still in bed, reading, your husband absorbed in a crossword puzzle on his iPad.  You lean over, check the clock and notice it's way later than you thought, so you think for a moment and then off-handedly comment, "You know, we don't have to do that drive today if you don't want."

"No?" says your husband, his voice betraying his relief.

"Sure.  We can just stay around here."

This drive was hatched as a concrete plan while we floated in and out of civilization yesteray on Innis More (sp!).  We would get in the Nissan of Terror earlyish, say nine or ten, and meander north, stopping in various villages, visiting Connemara, a big national park, checking out an abbey, then continue along the coast, through ancient fishing villages before landing back in Galway in time for our tapas reservation at 19:30.  This was no spur-of-the-moment thing.  It was carefully constructed via Rick Steves Bible and Google maps, though not finalized. 

And just like that: poof!  Gone.

Okay, full disclosure.  The plan was in trouble by the time we woke up, an hour later than we'd originally planned.  It wasn't in tatters, but it had basically imploded the night before at around 8:30, before dinner, when an exhausted Sandra Bullock, who'd early suggested that the day's 25,000 steps and tenuous contact with civilization had taken such a toll that a good idea for tonight was "room service and, like, maybe watch a movie," did a sudden, if weary, about-face, stating, "We took showers.  We should at least go out to dinner."

Which was fine with me. I didn't come 6,000 miles to sit around a hotel room, not even one with surprisingly effective air conditioning.  "Great.  Find a place to eat that's close," my wife ordered.

Aside: my least favorite thing to do in the world is "find a place to eat."  It's also my burden and mine alone, because I'm "difficult," i.e. an actual vegetarian, not a part-time one.  Since, the reasoning goes, I'm the one most likely to object to a menu, I'm the one charged with finding an acceptable restaurant.  At home or on the road.  It is my albatross.  

Sometimes I like out and find a place that works.  I'm a hero then.  Most of the time, though, I flail and flail and we end up wandering around looking for "something that looks good," a scenario that too often ends with us holding laminated menus and me grumbling about "tourists."  Sometimes I'll choose a place and it'll be terrible, causing a heavy pall to hover over us the entire meal.

Worst of all are the times I have a name and an address but can't find the place.  This is a disaster and most of the time ends with a hasty Plan B and laminated menus.

Last night, though, dumb luck prevailed.  The Hyde Bar, three doors down from our hotel, was great.  Our Australian waiter was (maybe a bit too) attentive, the vegetarian options shined and the seafood was prime.  Success!

We finished dinner at 9:45.  At this point, Connemara was still very much in play, probable, even.  It stayed well in sight even when Sandra Bullock, buoyed by our great dinner, suggested we "have another drink" and watch the acoustic duo put their guitar/bongos/iPad spin on a really strange set  in the bar. 

Then the races ended. 

This week is, of course, Galway Race Week, the Kentucky Derby of Galway only a week long, drawing race fans, fans of dressing up and wearing outrageous hats and fans of being drunk from all over the country.  At 10 PM, they streamed into the Hyde Bar.  

Connemara was in trouble.

How are you supposed to leave this?  Your quiet bar with the weird acoustic duo is suddenly over run by girls in dresses and heels, weird hats, guys in foppish vests and ties?  You're supposed to just go home and not watch this?   You do this you miss out on waving off the photographer when he tries to snap you in your non-dressed up garb.  You miss the stocky little drunk guy get busted by his drunk fiancee when he tries to entice your wife to come out to the (makeshift) dance floor.  You miss learning that some hats are actually headbands.  You can't miss this.

Still, when we walked out at 11, Connemara was gasping but still alive.  It wasn't until we heard the country music coming out of the bar across the street that Connemara died.  We just didn't realize it had died until 10 hours later.  

Murty's Rabbit looks like a tourist bar and maybe it is, but on this night it was packed with Irish people of all stripes -- and us.  Another American couple poked their heads in but, aghast at the guy in the suit with the planets all over it, maybe, or the table full of moms singing Irish folk songs, they quickly ducked out.  We stayed.

Because wouldn't you stay if the guys in the corner who looked like they'd come to fix the clog in the sink turned out to be the band?  And if that band played a mix of oldies, country tunes and Irish folk songs, wouldn't you stick around if only to marvel at how every song, no matter the genre, came out sounding like an Irish folk song?  And then, when the elderly sisters get up and start swing dancing to "Stop the World and Let Me Off" at midnight, then, my friend, you'll understand that it is you, and not the other Americans, who has made the correct choice, even if the cost of that choice is Connemara. 

People were still streaming in -- mothers with their grown sons, middle-aged guys in slacks, post-adolescents and of course, racegoers dressed to the nines -- when we dragged ourselves away at 12:30, fooling ourselves just a little bit when we agreed, before turning out the light, that we'd "decide tomorrow morning" about driving to Connemara. 

No chance.  Connemara knew it was dead even if we wouldn't admit it.

And then: "We could just hang around here."  So that's what we did.  We got up and walked all the way to Salt Hill, the "popular tourist resort" a few miles to the north.  We walked the promenade, hugging the shore, mingling with locals and some tourists, finding Texaco stations that have minimarts but no public restrooms, LeisureLand, which is surprisingly not a retirement community but instead a children's amusement park, quiet residential streets where every third house is a B & B and so many places to buy soft serve, even the Texaco without the bathroom. 

We strolled through Galway's West End, me cursing us out for not discovering this lively but local district a few nights earlier, then returned to our tourist cohort in search not of jugglers

Stradivarius for the win!

and street performers (those were easy to find) but our afternoon infusion of beer and french fries, and maybe a place to watch some horse racing.  After what seemed like an eternity of ducking into bars called (Irish first name like "Paddy," "Michael" or "McGettigan") (Irish surname like "O'Brien," "O'Connor," or "McGee) (apostrophe) and finding no food and a male-to-female ratio that sunk to 100:0 once we left, we found our fries at Garvey's, where a spirited crowd of locals had gathered to watch the Galway Races on TV, then thrilled as Stradivarius came from well back in the pack to surge to a win, his fifth in a row, per the elderly William S. Burroughs doppelganger sitting to my right. 

So yes, Connemara was doomed long before we said it out loud, as doomed as our plan to hike to Dun Aengus the day before.  But as with Dun Aengus, the alternative turned out to be just fine.  I've been telling Sandra Bullock  that my favorite things are the ones you don't plan for, like finding the Scottish kids playing music "under the tent" in Inverness or stumbling across the Dundee Crew in Aberdeen; or finding a bunch of plumbers playing "Dirty Old Town" as a pair of elderly sisters swing dances on a makeshift dance floor.  You plan too much and you end up missing out on having William S. Burroughs explain that the horse you just saw sweep to victory from behind does that all the time and who wants to miss out on that?

Lawless Poles.

Final full disclosure:  Connemara might have been derailed even earlier.  The end may have come on our bus ride back from the Aran Islands ferry, when we sat behind a lawless young(ish, maybe not as young as they'd like you to think) Polish couple whose non-stop PDA may have been fueled by the vodka (or gin) they were drinking out of a soda bottle and the beers they poured 10 minutes before we pulled into Galway.  After an hour of watching that, we were rattled.  Tough to bounce back from that.  Sorry, Connemara.  

Today's numbers:

81.7 -- distance, in kilometers, from the Park House Hotel in Galway to Connemara, wear and tear not inflicted on the Nissan of Terror, thanks to us.  Your welcome, Nissan.

8.94 -- distance, in miles, we covered on foot today, burning 2,600 more calories than we would've burned sitting in a Nissan, save for the 300 or so I might have burned via anxiety.

66 -- estimated height, in inches, of the lead singer of last night's band.  "That's how tall Roger Daltrey is, you know," I confided to Sandra Bullock.  "He is?" she said.

4 -- number of times I've heard the song "Wagon Wheel" in the past 24 hours, once live. 

56 -- total number of Europeans spotted wearing Yankees baseball caps.  

94.3 -- percentage of Europeans spotted wearing Yankees hats who have Chicago Bulls jerseys buried in their closets back home.

6 -- bars visited before finding one that had food, this after eating over 50 percent of our meals in bars that serve food, conveniently stumbled upon by us during the first 20 days of this trip.

71 -- percentage of races Stradivarius has started and won in 2019.  Total earnings before today:  2.336 million EU.

Tomorrow we leave Galway and drive to Doolin, the "home of traditional Irish music" and the cliffs of Moher on the "Wild Atlantic Coast."   All of the plumber bands and elderly swing dancing ladies can't change that.