Galway city and Knock with the McCarthy's April 2015

Yesterday was spent travelling from Killarney to Galway, which was the McCarthy's next destination on their tour of the west of Ireland. This morning we took a tour of this great and historic city in glorious sunshine, as you can see, Here we are on the seafront of the city in the suburb of Salthill, with the lovely Galway Bay in the background.

Galway City was an Anglo-Norman town, and was surrounded by a horseshoe shaped wall, with the river on the western side, where of course a wall was not needed. In this picture we were actually crossing the bridge into the city, and you can make out a small portion of the old wall in the background, close to the river bank, to the right of the picture. There are two arches in this remaining section of the wall, and this structure is known as the Spanish Arch.

I took this picture at the inner end of the bridge. The stone monument to the right is a memorial to Christopher Columbus and his crew, as they had made their final stop off in Galway on their journey to discover the New World. Directly to the left of the memorial and far off in the background, you can see daylight through one of the arches of the Spanish Arch.

The picture below was taken in Knock, that famous shrine in county Mayo where Our Lady appeared back in the eighteen hundreds. This is now a recognised shrine, where hundreds of thousands of people come to pray annually. The Basilica,which you can see in the background, was built to commemorate the visit of the Pope.

The west of Ireland is famous for its stone walls.

Here we have Garrett and Eileen enjoying the sunshine as we made our to Knock.All of these stones are loosely packed together, with no mortar used in their construction. They are truly a work of art.