The first of our trip to Ireland was mostly travel. We had an early flight to Dallas that went quicker than expected thanks to a tail wind, not that it saved us any time. In Dallas we had a 2 hour layover where we explored we just sat waited expectedly for our trip to start. Our final flight to Dublin was around 8 hours, and was actually pretty enjoyable. I tried my best to sleep on the plane so that jetlag wouldn't hit me that bad, but that didn't really pan out. There were some decent movies given for in flight entertainment so at least I got that. Outside of a lack of sleep the flight was easy going and we landed in Dublin at 5am.
After we got our luggage and much deliberation we decided that we would head to the train station and head to Galway. The only problem was the train station didn't open for another 2 hours, so we sat and waited in yet another airport before grabbing a cab to the station. While we were waiting Dad tried to grab his first Guinness of the trip but unfortunately the lines weren't working. Once at the station we bought our tickets and hopped on the train for to Galway. The ride was about 2 hours, but I don't really remember much of it because I was a sleep.
Eventually we finally made it to our destination just in time for the shops to start opening. Our airbnb host was gracious enough to open up early and let us drop off our luggage while she got the place ready for us. Once our luggage was dropped off the only thing left for us to do was go to the nearest pub and grab some breakfast. Once we found a spot we went in and made our order (full Irish breakfasts all around), and Dad tried again to get that Guinness he had been craving. After firmly cementing himself, and the rest of us, as an alcoholic with that order our server told us that they don't serve alcohol in the morning on Sundays. Also I should note that she genuinely looked shocked at that request because is was something like 9 or 10 in the morning, but like give us a break we had been up for like 30 hours at that point and for us it felt really late.
The breakfast was great and honestly well earned after all of the travel we had to endure just to get there. Once our bellies were full we walked around the town to see what it had to offer. There were plenty of pubs and shops for us to spend our money on, and there was a Christmas market set up full of vendors. Eventually once it was an appropriate time of day we hopped in to another pub and Dad was finally able to get his Guinness. After that not much more happened. We walked around and looked into shop and really just took in the town. It was a pretty place and because of the Christmas decorations it felt like we were in a Hallmark movie. We ended up calling it a day at 9pm and went to bed so we could get ready for the next day.
