Saturday morning we decided we'd seen enough of Dublin (kind of a dirty big city, not so much cultural), so yesterday we hopped on the bus and came to Galway - actually with no plans for a place to stay. Not even five minutes after stepping off the bus a man who owns an apartment building in town offered us hostel rates to stay in one - it has two bedrooms, a full kitchen and laundry, our own bathrooms, and a balcony overlooking the street. I love Galway - it's right on the water, and we mixed with much more locals. Last night after a fabulouso traditional Irish dinner, we pubbed it up at this place called Taaffe's. I have thus far enjoyed Guinness, Murphy's, Smithwick's beer, as well as my personal favorite, Bulmer's (Irish cider). At the pub we met some crazy old dirty Irish men, and later their son/nephew David showed up with his friend Ronnie who (Belle, are you reading?) was even HOTTER, and we hung out with them for the evening. They showed us around to more local pubs (instead of touristy ones) and even bought us free drinks! (Don't worry Mom, I held it the whole time). They said they would meet us the next day to hang out more, but since they'd been drinking we weren't sure they would remember to come back. Today, we walked to the giant cathedral for Mass, and afterwards when we walked back to change our clothes, the boys were waiting outside as planned and invited us to come watch a game. We didn't go, but did our own thing --- pretty much just walking around and doing nothing, free of the constrictions of time!!! It's been unbelieveable!!! I bought myself a new Claddagh ring to remember this amazing experience by. Instead of paying money to eat out, we bought some cheap frozen pizza's and a bottle of nice Irish whiskey from the local fast food/grocery store called Spar. Afterwards we went out to Taaffe's again (just love the atmosphere) and ran in to David again just as he was leaving, but we exchanged email addresses, took pictures, and hope to keep in touch with him. After Taaffe's we went to the more famous/touristy pub called Quay's where they had a live rock band playing more American stuff. We had a fabulous time and some more locals bought us a round of drinks, but... without going into too much detail, when we realized that the creep was a definite perv, we thanked him for the drinks and went home (lucky we have Josh with us all the time to kung fu anyone who needs it -except he was drinking at the other end of the bar, ha ha). Then we chilled back at our own place, playing Uno and just talking and laughing.