The most-boring Mcdonalds ever?

I never really looked at this building  which houses McDonald's in Galway,  Ireland,  until it closed for renovations first a couple if months.  

What can they be doing which is going to take so long 🤔

And doesn't the whole place look so boring once you can't see inside the ground floor.

Ireland's most intricate shopping centre

Infinitely interesting shadow-patterns to be seen as the sun moves over the glass rooftop of St Stephen's Green shopping centre in Dublin, Ireland.   (Photo taken in August 2026)

Garden sheds, meccaino men are an optional extra

Some very interesting super-size salesmen hanging around the yard at Steeltech Sheds in Galway Ireland.   Could make interesting security guards! 

Interesting rectangles in the sunshine

I'm sure I've taken better photos of this building in Galway before.  But the intense contrast between the front and the sides was really striking in today's bright sunshine.  

An accounts office, living above the shop

Love the way that a small sign beside a main-street accessories shop in Loughrea, Co Galway (shaped like the end of a ribbon, no less) points to a whole different business, which is accessed via a differently-coloured doorway at the end of this main-street building.

Maggie May's picturesque pub

 Maggie Mays, a picturesque in the main street of Loughrea, County Galway in August 2026, with a county flag flying from one end of the building, blue sky and a chem-trail (sic!) in the background.   (It's another pub-photo which is surprisingly popular on Google Maps.

The brightest yellow bar

Keary's Bar in Loughrea, County Galway Ireland in August 2026, with a very bright yellow front, and a back door through the arch which is Kings Street, complete with kegs and a green wheely rubbish bin outside. 

Michael Regan is a busy man

I'd heard radio-ads for these two businesses in Loughrea, Co Galway before, but I never realised that they share the very same premises.  A very interesting business combination.

Extreme pinkness in Loughrea

Hope's Bakery and Coffee Shop in Loughrea's main street in August 2026 is extremely pink!   It's not often that I think somewhere is too pink - but this one managed it.

Early solar eclipse glow

On 13 August 2026, there was a 90-something percentage solar eclipse.  Early on, there was an eerie glow along the Corrib river in Galway, bathing Leonardo hotel in an unusually attractive light.

Vincent's in the Sunshine

Loughrea on a sunny day in August 2026, even the charity shops sparkling in the sunshine. 

Ireland's last internet cafe?

Tucked away in the side street leading to the Weavers Court short term carpark in Loughrea, this local computer shop is also a fully funcactioning Internet cafe.  

There was even a customer sitting at a computer when I poked my nose in one day in August 2026 to see if I'd some how time-travelled back ten years.

I have no idea if it really is the last Internet café in Ireland,  but it seems distinctly possible. 

Not like any phone booth I've ever seen before

This phone repairs shop in Loughrea, County Galway was snapped on a sunny summer day in 2026.  The building is even the right shape for a phone booth.  Just a bit blue than most.

Ice cream beside the Irish Sea

Back in 2021, I took a quick snap of this very pretty-pink ice-cream shop, complete with a seemingly-pirouetting cone, in the village of Bettystown in Co Meath on Ireland's eastern seaboard.

Five years later, someone "loved" the photo in Google Maps.   It's probably the ice-cream that they were appreciating, but I thought I'd share a high-resolution photo here anyway.

False Creek - a residential waterfront in Vancouver, BC.

 

A waterfront scene from Vancouver, Canada in June 2007, of an area known as False Creek:  It's actually a short inlet which confused an early hydrographic surveyor.  Despite looking office-ish, the building at the front-left ("1000 Beach") is full of fancy apartments.

Anything but beauty

Normally I share pictures which have a (slight) streak of beauty about them.  This has nothing of the sort.

But I was drawn to this now-abandoned building  which has got progressively more decayed every year since I've lived in this city.  You could even call it anti-beauty.

Known as Canavan House it is located at the city end of Nun's Island in Galway city.  In the early 20-noughties it was home to the Galway Centre For Unemployed /  Galway Peoples Resource Centre.  Eventually they closed or moved, and plans to convert it to a boutique hotel never got off the ground.   

Since then nature has been working hard to take over the site.  Now, even the hoardings look like they need protective covers, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a tree rising up through the roof space one day.

Past their prime, but pretty in the sunshine

 

Each summer recently these outside, multi-story flower pots make their appearance in Eyre Square.

When they first come out, they look beautifully assembled and balanced.  

But as the summer goes on, some plants grow a little faster than others, and some suffer more damage from the madding crowds of Race Week.  We all know that eventually the plants will or get damaged as the new crop of students set themselves goals for tipping monster flower-pots onto their side.

But in late July, in the sunshine and from the middle-distance, they do look beautiful.

Street scene, Chinatown, Calgary, 2007

The contrasting building styles caught my eye in Calgary in early July 2007.  The building in the middle is the Chinese United Church and Chinese gymnasium.

Mechanical "stuff" at the docks

I have NO ide what this is - but even so I took a quick-pic in 2017.  I think at Galway Harbour, when an Irish Navy ship held an open day.

 

 

Sally Swan in her younger days

 Back in 2019, Sally Swan wasn't lurking quietly waiting for someone to open the gate, she was sporting her original coat and planning to charge!    

An almost black-and-white pub-pic

I snapped a quick-pic in of this naturally photogenic pub in Clarenbridge in mid June:  its the closest I've ever got to a naturally black-and-white shot.

Actually .... it would be a great candidate for the B&W series I started a while ago.  Let's see: