Galway trip! (or 'Penneys Eyre Square Essence stand')

This week I took a spontaneous trip to visit my sister Laura! She lives in Galway, which is 3 hours away from me by bus, so I don't get to see her all that often. She had a couple of days off work, so I went up there to hang out a little.
I had one shopping aim for this trip, to buy new shoes and a dress. I only managed the shoes. A cheap €5 pair of mustard yellow doll shoes from Penneys. Buying dresses involves trying them on. Trying them on becomes tedious very quickly, so that didn't last too long.
Penneys in the Eyre Square shopping center has lots of cheap makeup!
It has a Catrice stand, a Rimmel stand, and best of all a HUGE Essence stand! I love Essence products, their shadows and polishes especially are just fantastic. Their 'no animal testing' policy is also a big guilt free plus. I was in my element, I just love browsing their products and looking for polishes that I don't already own. So began the Essence nails mini-spree.


There was Disney Snow White polish collection there, that I hadn't seen in the Essence stands in Cork. It had been heavily ravaged already, but I picked up a few of the remaining colours for Laura, since she loves Disney things so much. The shades were adorably named after the dwarfs. I managed to swipe 'Grumpy' (royal blue), 'Bashful' (dark green with gold undertones) and 'Dopey' (shimmery lilac) for her. I also nabbed her an effect topcoat in 'Prince Charming' (blue and silver glitter, different sized particles), and a pack of nail stickers featuring butterflies, apples and strangely enough, grass. I took the liberty of picking her up a tube of Cuticle Remover gel,  and bottles of the 24/7 Studio Nails base coat and Quick Dry top coat. She didn't already own any of these things, and I needed to fix that if we were going to do our nails.

Image from: http://en.essence-beautyfriends.eu

The Cuticle Remover gel is great, I don't have any cuticle softening stuff myself. I've been meaning to get some for a while now, and after using this I'll have to do it before my next application. Unfortunately, the Essence counters in Cork aren't as extensive as this one in Galway, so I doubt I'll be able to find this same one. It's not as if I haven't had a really, really good look already. I'll have to scout for a worthy alternative. 
I also got an effect topcoat in 'Evil Queen' for myself, and I did attempt to use it, with lumpy results. The 'particles' are big purple discs, and they're hard to simply coat on without either getting too few or too many. I didn't have any implements with which to guide them around the nail, so I did what I could with layers of top coat. The next day I took it off because of the aforementioned lumpiness, but I will not let it defeat me.
You can read more about the Essence Snow White polish collection here:
http://www.essence.eu/index.php?id=1989&L=0

I'm currently testing the Essence 24/7 base coat for longevity vs the Revlon one. The only obvious difference between the two seems to be that the Essence base coat finished matte, and the Revlon one shiny. That of course, and the price. The Essence one was €2.29, and the Revlon one €9. I'll keep you posted.
The only other Essence polish I got was a Colour3 one in 'Walk in the park'. If you haven't heard of the Colour3 polishes, you're really missing out and I feel very bad for you. I have 4 of these now, I believe. They are double ended polishes, an opaque colour on one side and a sheer shimmery polish on the other, which is suitable for layering on the opaque colour. 'Walk in the park' is a teal/green polish, and its sheer counterpart is 'Stop for an ice cream', a blue/gold/silver shimmer. It's really pretty on, I'll do a review of the Colour3 polishes that I have soon and add some pictures.


Nail enamel excitement aside, I had a great time in Galway. I always do when I go there! We went to a nice little Italian restaurant one night for dinner. The name escapes me, but it was tasty and reasonably priced. I made Laura watch loads of Angel with me, and when she refused to watch any more we compromised on the Powerpuff Girls. We did some well earned relaxing, and visited some of Laura's favourite haunts. We saw some of her friends play music one night at the Roisín Dubh (she's a musical type herself), had coffee at Java's and breakfasted at An Tobar Nua. Fun times were had by all!