Ireland Tour Day 5

Tue 19th Oct


This morning we started out by visiting a Celtic crystal factory. The glass is handcut and the designs are Celtic designs with some having been taken from the Book of Kells.
Making crystal is quite an art. The patterns are hand done from memory and not from any kind of stencil or anything.

We watched a demonstration of a guy cutting different patterns into a glass bowl. It seemed to take him no time at all. The pattern at the bottom of the bowl was called the rose pattern. It just looked so simple when he was cutting the glass but it looks so good and precise with spacing etc.

The glass is quite thick to begin with. Then the pattern is cut twice into it. The glass is treated with acid and then polished to shine it up.

the Claddagh pattern

Next stop along the way was the marble factory. There are different types of marble mined in the area. We had a brief intro in which the guy mentioned that the marble dates to the pre-Cambrian period (which spans a long time but prob around 4000 million years ago. There are a lot of marble quarries around Galway and the Connemara region. Marble is basically limestone but the Irish green colour is due to the zinc impurities.

Next we headed out to the Killary Fjord where we did a Connemara cruise. There are 3 fjords in Ireland with the waterways carved into the steep hills by glaciers. The weather was beautiful and we were able to look at the mussel rafts in the water. We could also see sheep grazing on the hillsides. The farmers just let them loose and around this part of Ireland there arent even fences keeping sheep in certain paddocks.

Back to Galway for the afternoon to have some free time to walk around sightseeing or shopping for souvenirs.
There is a little fishing village outside of Galway called Claddagh which is where the ring comes from. The Claddagh symbol is two hands clasping a heart with a crown above. The heart represents 'love', the hands 'friendship' and the crown is for 'loyalty'.

Went out to hear some more Irish music at Galway. Only a few of us went as our hotel is slightly outside the city centre so it's not really that walkable.
We were trying more Irish beers... I had to have a laugh cos there's one called
'Galway hooker'. Our tour guide was talking about a hooker convention when we drove through one of the fishing village towns. We all thought it was terrible funny when he was talking about the annual hooker convention.
So I had to try the Galway hooker beer but i didnt really like it. Found an Irish cider i do like though called Bulmers.

on tap... i can say that i had a Galway hooker!

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