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The Left Bank district is a jumble of lanes and small streets lined with pubs, antiques shops, bookstores, and one of the few surviving Irish bookbinders.
An Aladdin's cave of a place in which to browse, the funky Bastion Gallery sells quirky gifts, books, and toys. The owner, Katie McCay, designs and handcrafts jewelry designed with ogham, the first written form of Gaelic, sculpting words onto chains, pendants, and earrings. The shop opens in the afternoons from 12:30 to 6 pm.
Combining a workshop and gallery, the Celtic Roots Studio in Ballinahown specializes in hand-carved sculptures and personalized jewelry from 5,000-year-old bogwood in the nearby Lough Boora bog, where the wood was preserved in the peat. The owner engraves her work, creating wish stones and all manner of carvings evocative of the natural world and Irish mythology, which make special keepsakes. Ballinahown is the last village in Westmeath as you travel to Clonmacnoise.
Owned and run since 1997 by the affable John Donohoe, this bookshop is exactly the way a secondhand bookstore should be: cluttered, disorganized, and heaving with rare and signed Irish-related and general books (up to 10,000 titles at any one time).
