Our last week in beautiful Galway sped by. It was our finals week, so we spent much of the time finishing up our schoolwork here. Much of Monday and Tuesday were spent working on things. We had one 8 page paper and a speech due in our art history class, and a 12 page paper and a final exam in our Irish history class. Luckily Erin and I had kept up on our work and weren't completely overloaded with writing and studying.
Tuesday night we went out to a pub called Monroe's. We had never been there before but we heard they had Irish music and dancing and we wanted to try it before we left. We went with just our friend Lexi, as everyone else had to keep up with their work for finals. We found a seat at the edge of the room and enjoyed some drinks before the dancing started. A few older couples came in and as the music started they started dancing. It seemed that everyone knew the moves and they were all really good at the dances, which made it much more fun to watch. They were stomping and tapping and spinning all to a few men playing some great music.
Wednesday we spent the morning working on more things for finals. I was feeling a little cooped up that day so I walked down to the river that ran parallel to our apartments. If you walk about a mile down the path you'll find a dock overlooking the river with a crumbling, ivy-covered castle on the opposite banks. I sat there for awhile, enjoying the sun and the beautiful view.
Later that day we decided to go to the Galway Races. This was one of the biggest events of the summer in Ireland, so there were massive amounts of people all around town. We got all fancy and took a cab to the races, where we hung out for the afternoon and people watched. That night we went to a fun pub that we hadn't been to before called the Front Door. Since it's our last week we are trying to do all the things we've been wanting to do in the little time we have left.
Thursday we had our last class, which was when our presentation and our essay was due. It was so great to be able to finish it well and to get the weight of the class work off my chest. After our classes that day the program directors put on a final banquet for us at a nice hotel downtown. We walked down after getting dressed up and enjoyed a delicious three course meal all together one last time. It was bittersweet, as a lot of the people were leaving the next day and many of these people we may not see again. That night we went out one last night, but because it was the week of the races it was absolutely crazy. Many people use this event just as an excuse to drink a lot every night, and it was extremely obvious this particular night. Everyone was drunk and there was no room at any of the pubs. We eventually decided to call it quits and headed home.
Our last day in Galway was a little sad. We went downtown one last time to enjoy breakfast at a little bakery we had gone to a few times and to do some las minute shopping for the final leg of our trip. We packed most of the day, and enjoyed the remaining hours we had in Galway. We were originally going to order in a pizza that night and watch a movie, but Erin was getting sick and so she ended up going to bed early. We had to get up at 5 the next morning to get going on our trip to London, so I crashed early as well, anxious for the day of travel to come.
