Galway and last days in Dublin

Galway was amazing. It's a couple hours west of Dublin and is home to a small, artsy, college town. We went there for the Galway Arts Festival. Unfortunately, a lot of the shows were sold out, but we did get to see many street performers and street bands. There were these really cool street performers with puppets from Belgium that were amazing and could rival Syracuse's Open Hand Theatre. I stayed in this really cool hostel in a twelve bed co-ed room, where I met two French girls, one hot Australian guy , one really hot Brazilian guy, who was also friendly and was flirting with me in bad English. If only I knew Portugese, like in Love Actually. There were also two people, a guy and his girlfriend from Switzerland. They gave me the heads up on Switzerland and said that Bern is very beautiful.
We had amazing fish and chips. There was also this really awesome market in the morning that we went to where they had open stalls of everything from jewelry, clothes, fruits and veggies, a crepe food vender (yum!), Indian, Middle-Eastern, fresh juices, etc. I loved it and bought a bag there made out of hemp and silk, because sadly, my birthright bag died. And there was some cool Celtic jewelry and Galway glass. Galway is famous for its woolen sweaters, but I couldn't afford them, unfortunately. The night of the first day we arrived there was the premiere of the last Harry Potter book, so up until midnight, the streets were also packed with Harry Potter fans. I saw two kids wand dueling. It was pretty intense. I ended up buying later a copy of the book in Dublin, because it's cheap here and it has Anglocisms in it. I know Aunt Laurie just got an American version for free, but we can have both. The British version is a lot smaller in size than the American version, for some reason. So it's not that heavy to schlep.

The last few days in Dublin were hectic with papers, but they were also bittersweet. I started wishing I could be here longer to see all the things I didn't get to see. Maybe a family vacation or a group reunion will happen in the near-distant future? Hopefully. And Kilby, my roommate, said she might be able to come down from Toronto to my seder and see Esther's fashion show. Everyone here wants to meet Esther, lol, between the whole twin thing and the fashion. She's famous with her skills and fashion saaviness with all my friends, and she hasn't even met them...Hehe, I bragged a lot about you, Esthi. Anyway, I gotta go to bed, was up late packing, and have to get up early to go to the airport, but thanks for reading my blog. I'll try to update at home on my post-Ireland adventures in London, Switzerland, and hopefully Paris, if I can contact Laurence and if she's available.

Cheers!
Hannah