| April 24th, 2008 | Ireland, Travel

I woke up this morning after getting just about the average amount of sleep that I’ve been getting since I’ve arrived in Ireland, which is about 6 hours or so. Although I was tired, I was excited about heading down to my aunts house in O’Callaghan Mills, Co. Clare.

I headed downtown to Galway to catch the bus to Ennis at about 8:30, the bus was scheduled to leave at 9:05. I made sure that I gave myself enough time to stop at the convenience store to grab a drink for the journey. Walking into town from my cousins apartment in Salt Hill is only about a fifteen minute walk so it’s not too bad at all. To be honest it’s faster to walk than to drive into town due to the crazy rush hour traffic at that time of the morning in Galway.

I was one of the first people to get on the bus, I headed straight to the back so that I could take up a few seats and relax on this hour and fifteen minute bus ride. There were only a handful of people on the bus, so it was nice and quiet. I ended up meeting a young woman named Sarah on the bus ride down to Ennis. She lives and works in Galway but her family lives in Clare so she was making the two hour trip out to Clare to see her family for the weekend. Oh, and we won’t tell her boss that she called in sick today to extend her weekend in Clare!

After arriving at the Ennis bus station, I waited for my aunt to pick me up. She was under the assumption that I would be taking a later bus, so I stood around at the bus station for a bit before she arrived. It was fine though because the weather was fairly nice.

When she finally arrived we headed over to the mart. The mart is a place where all of the farmers hang out. It’s a cattle mart, a cattle auction actually. It was quite interesting. You’d have to see the video to understand how hard it actually is to hear what the “ringer” or auctioneer is yelling out for prices. It’s just a bunch of garble really. Since I’m Italian and I talk with my hands, I think I might have put in a bid once or twice while watching the auction. Oops!

After walking on the cat walk over the thousands of cows and cattle, we headed down to the restaurant that is connected to the cattle mart and had a nice breakfast. Once we finished eating my aunt and I headed off spend the day at Craggaunowen, and Bunratty Castle.