We began the Paddywagon tour as two of just six people doing the six day tour of southern Ireland, although soon merged with a much larger group doing a ten day tour of all of Ireland.The group of six of us worked well, given this was the size of many of the dorm rooms we had to share along the way.Our four new friends included Reid and Kim from Canada, Jess from South Africa and Thomas from Holland.An opening day highlight was our first tour guide, Mike, who was well armed with not only the standard tour guide history and geography knowledge, but an array of 'good craic' and impersonations of people who originated from anywhere outside of Ireland.To say 'ze Germans' on the bus didn't find him quite so amusing would be a fair statement.Mike also introduced us to two Irish songs that rarely escaped our heads over the remaining days of the tour, namely 'Galway Girl' and 'The Rattlin' Bog'.

For the first day we headed west for County Mayo where we stopped in the town of Cong for lunch and a birthday, lunchtime Guiness.Here was the first of many castles to be seen over the next 6 days, as well as the ruins of an abbey and a forest walk in search of the elusive leprechaun.The afternoon took us through the high mountains and low damp bogs of Connemara before we arrived at a very wet Galway.The evening brought everyone from a number of different Paddywagon tours together for a meal before an evening filled with more Guiness, Irish music and some girls on the tour being harassed by some over eager Galway lads!