Guess what? Get onto the N6 at Athlone and it is indeed dual-carriageway (divided highway?) but after a short while it peters out and you're back on the typical Irish "highway" - one lane in each direction and "no overtaking" (passing) signs. You can tell Ireland is an agricultural country - I've never met so many tractors travelling so far, so often, anywhere on the UK main roads! (Irish friends inform me that the Irish farmers even take the tractor down to church on a Sunday *g*)
Galway is a lovely town, once again with "rush hour" traffic problems. The road works didn't help. However I found a guest house on the road into town, outside the circle of road works, so they didn't bother me. (I only found them as I walked into town for dinner later where they were causing snarl ups for pedestrians trying to cross the road as well as cars and buses).
Once you get past the town square - a lovely park which recently has had many of its trees replanted and replaced - you find yourself in a great pedestrianised shopping street. Follow the street down towards the quay and suddenly you could be in a street in the South of France with lots of fantastic restaurants, most with tables out on the pavement.
The buildings are colourful, the crowds friendly - especially the locals (I didn't meet one single surly person in Ireland). Music sounds from many open doors - and from the street where buskers take up their pitch for the evening. It was just a *little* weird to run into a bagpiper there - I thought I'd left them behind on Princes Street!
I spent a few hours wandering around here trying to decide which of the many restaurants to try - a LOT of seafood - and eventually decided on a small place where I had an excellent plate of Irish Stew, the walls decorated with pictures of Irish poets, then a quiet (well, quiet as possible in an Irish pub) drink before heading back to my guest house (via the cybercafe to check email - I was supposed to be meeting some internet buddies in Dublin and needed to know which pub they'd decided on as a meeting place). Fell asleep very quickly despite the quietness of the night.
One thing about Irish guest houses I found was their eagerness to please at breakfast - nothing is a problem. You want your eggs over easy, poached, boiled, runny yolks? No problem. Yes they are a tourist economy - so is Blackpool in England, where the landlady of one guest house informed me that if I didn't like what she normally served, "tough". In Ireland if they don't have your breakfast cereal of choice in stock, they get it in for you next morning!
NB - When I left Galway and the "St Jude's Lodge, College Street" on Wednesday morning I was stupid enough to leave my favourite "Teva" sandals lying on the floor under the bed. I called them from Dublin and they promised to post them to me - it's now a week later and the sandals have arrived in Scotland. All Hail the staff of St Jude's Lodge!!!
Next day I headed for Dublin. Back along the N6 - following much the same route as the day previous until I got to Athlone. Stopped for lunch at Tyrellspass at a restaurant in the "castle" there - rather a small castle, like a lot of the Scottish ones.
Approaching Dublin I found the first sign of what I would actually call a "motorway". Very nice motorway at that. Not a lot of it, but very nice. Now an odd thing about Irish drivers seems to be that they come in two "flavours". A lot of the roads in Ireland have a max speed limit of 50 mph - and some drivers prefer to drive them at 90mph. On the motorway and dual carriage ways I found the other kind of driver - the ones who think that 40mph is way too fast and sit in the outside (fast or passing) lane at that speed!.
Dublin city's traffic is infamous - and well deserved - but parking in the city is a lot easier than you might expect - illuminated electronic signs tell you which of the multi-storey car parks (of which there seem to be a lot) have spaces - and how many spaces they have. (Edinburgh's version just tells you "spaces" or "full" - when it says "spaces" does it mean 200 or 2? when you get there will they be full?). In fact when I found a car park it was actually almost empty!
I walked about 10 minutes (not that long a walk really) into the crowded tourist centre of the city to find the Tourist Office. The weather was gorgeous - sunny, dry, warm. Passing the cathedral (one of them at least *g*) I found these plaques on the pavement - I didn't see anything telling me what they were, but I'm guessing that they might be replicas of artifacts found during an excavation in the area.
Dublin seems to have a lot of nice sculpture - this is outside a bank
The Tourist Office in Dublin is located inside an old church - appropriately for me (a Scot) called "St Andrews". It's not too easy to locate - the signpost is kind of wonky and the building is up a back street. However it's well stocked and the "accomodation" section is very efficient - with computerised information. A few moments with the requirements I gave her and the girl was able to suggest about 5 places that matched my requirements. I ended up in a "one star hotel" just off O'Connell Street (and if she'd told me it was just off O'Connell Street I might have found it easier *g*) on Parnell Street. After a certain amount of driving round and round the Dublin one way system (eek!) I eventually pulled up and asked a passer by for directions - only to have her point out that I was actually parked in front of "The Gate Hotel".
The Gate Hotel turned out to be an old building - bedrooms and a breakfast room above a pub. Entry was via a buzzer intercom system. The rooms were old, a little - odd (stairs had a slight angle that they probably didn't have when the building was built, bedroom floor had a slope) but it wasn't falling down, the rooms were clean and the bed comfortable. The hotel even had a small off-street car park behind the building, where I could leave the car all day Thursday. Whew!
End of Part 2 - story will continue in Part 3