Flour Power

Thanks to @grealish.

This Halloween, Galway's streets will be taken over by fancy dress parties, traditional games, Trick or Treating, and a re-enactment of Michael Jackson’s Thriller dance routine.

On Friday 30, the streets and pubs of the Latin Quarter will be the venue for a massive fancy dress party. And for those who like to compete, there are rumours that a €5000 prize will be awarded to the best costume will be prizes to the best costumes: 1st place €1000, 2nd place €500 and 3rd place €250.

Saturday 31 will have quite a few "Halloweeny" activities. In the afternoon: a kid's fancy dress party where the costumes have to be environment friendly, and Trick or Treating and traditional games along the Latin Quarter streets. At 4pm comes the big event of the weekend - a re-enactment of Michael Jackson’s Thriller dance routine and video in The Fishmarket at the Spanish Arch. The Galway Abooo Festival reaches its finale with the Saturday Night ‘Spooktacular Street Show’ - street performances will take place across the streets of the Latin Quarter from 8pm, leading to a display at 8.40pm at St. Nicholas’ Church.

To help bring as many people as possible to Galway, Irish Rail is providing a few "Ghost Trains" from Dublin at a special rate of €10.

More info can be found at the festival's official page.

This all looks promising indeed.

If you thought that 5€ to go from Galway to Dublin Airport was still too expensive, here's a price reduction - now it only costs 1€! Yes, that's correct, 1€ for a 217Km bus journey!

It's part of Citylink's campaign for their new "Non-Stop" service, that also includes the routes from Galway to Cork, Shannon Airport and Clifden:

The "Super Singles" ticket is available 7 days a week but must be bought, in advance, through Citylink’s on-line sales reservation service.

Tickets will be made available in limited numbers, so it’s essential that travellers book their tickets early in order to secure themselves the most affordable travel ticket Ireland has ever seen.

If the price of the bus ticket when planning trips was already an afterthought, now it's even less than that, because it's almost free. I pay more for the bus ticket to get to work...

The only thing missing now is a late bus from Dublin Airport to Galway. The last one is at 21:15, and in the last couple of trips I've arrived later than that and the only option was Gobus. And speaking about GoBus, I'm curious to see what they do about this. First they had the WiFi (which, by the way, I never managed to get to work) and the WC services to justify the triple price (€15). And they could also argue that their service was faster because it was non-stop. But it seems that Citylink now provides all that for MUCH less. Either GoBus lowers their prices or invents some other service that compensates for a price 15x higher.

Strippers?

Eh, even with the posting schedule all messed up, I can at least help spread the word about stuff happening here in Galway.

The gathering is being organised by the Portuguese Association of Ireland to celebrate the 99th Anniversary of the Proclamation of the Republic. And this time I got the information in advance, so I can show up and get to know the other Portuguese denizens in Galway. See you at Aras n'Gael!

Yeah, I know it's been a while since my last post. And it has been even longer since I did any proper post about the life here in Galway. I think the last ones were during the Volvo Ocean Race. But don't you think that nothing has happened since then! It's just that... well, instead of being lame and saying I didn't have time to post, I'll do a quick summary of what has been happening.

So, in reverse chronological order:

This last week was the "back to work" week. To start off nicely, I had a great 16-hour trip back to Galway (including a 7-hour wait at Madrid airport) which left me completely messed up for the rest of the week. And getting back to work after 1 week out also meant extra stuff to do and not even a bit of time to wander around the interwebs. Aw, c'mon, don't give me that look. Everyone surfs around the Internet while at work...

The week before that was spent in Portugal. The 6-month INOV Contacto internship had ended and I so I took 1 week off to go back to my home country. Plans had been made to spend most of the time visiting friends and that's what I did. Going to the beach and finally get some proper sunlight was also part of the plan, but with all the other stuff happening there wasn't a whole lot of time for that. And there was also the not so nice part of taking care of paperwork. Anyway, it was a great week, and I wish I could have stayed longer.

Two weeks before leaving I had a friend coming over to visit. And as a good host I showed him the best that Galway has to offer. That means a lot of pubs. That also means going out from Monday to Friday (he left on Saturday). During that week we also visited Dublin, and more importantly, I finally went to the Guinness Storehouse. I got to see how the stuff is made, tasted the best pint in the world (right at the brewery, you can't get any better than that!), and learned how to pour a pint of Guinness correctly. Also had a chance to show him that tag rugby is a lot of fun and not to be mocked with. All in all, I think I convinced him to come back one of these days, and that means it was a great week (the best bit was definitely the Irish breakfast...).

And going all the way back to June, 3 friends came to visit, during the last weekend of the Volvo Ocean Race. Listened to some concerts that were happening outside while confortably sitting down in the living room, watched the Portuguese national soccer team pulling one of those last-minute goals against Albania for the World Cup Qualifiers, and went out to enjoy the Galway nightlife and one of the most important aspects of Irish culture - the pubs.

And now that this has been taken care of, blogging will resume it's natural rhythm.

Stay tuned!

(photo by the_girl)

It was 6 months ago that I moved to Galway, Ireland, for a 6 months internship sponsored by the INOV Contacto program. It was 6 months ago that I left the comfort of the house I had lived in for the previous 20-something years and moved to a completely new place. It was 6 months ago that I had the first of many pints of Guinness…

Those were 6 great months.

A lot of fun was had at the awesome Irish pubs. Some travelling was done around Europe. A lot of people were met, and some became good friends.

Those were the good things, and although not everything was perfect, I really can’t point any especially bad experience. So the overall experience was very positive.

And that’s why I’m going back!

That’s right, I hadn’t made it official yet, but I’m announcing it now. The company where I did the internship offered me a contract extension and so I’ll go back to Galway for some more time.

It’s now time to rest, and I’ll be back in one week.

@ the Fancy Dress night of the Galway Corinthians Tag Rugby Tournament (I plan to explain this later)

Can you spot me?

The Green Dragon resting at the Galway docks.

My video reporting of the Volvo Ocean Race in Galway continues with a couple of videos of Lucia Evans' performance at The Topaz Main Stage in the Galway docks yesterday (May 26). A very windy night, as you can see and hear in the videos, but that didn't keep everyone at home, and the turnout was quite decent. Nothing like the previous day, though.

The third day of the festival celebrating the Galway stopover of the Volvo Ocean Race had Oleku Band playing in The Topaz Main Stage. I headed down there to check it out, although I wasn't expecting much, because it was a quite cold (and almost raining) Monday.

But what I saw left me positively surprised. There were actually quite a lot of people outside, and the majority was actually dancing to the African rythms presented by the Nigerian band. Near the end of the performance a few of the audience members started dancing Capoeira which rapidly gathered a big crowd around them. Fun stuff.

Here are two movies I recorded of the Oleku Band performance (no video of the Capoeira session because there wasn't enough light):