A Night and Day in Galway

Let me lay out the scene. It's almost my second weekend here and I have no clue what to do with it. Especially since it was a long weekend due to the bank holiday, a few friends and I decided to go to Galway for the weekend. We book our hostel, bus tickets, and a bus tour to the Cliffs of Moher and the Wild Atlantic Way. We wake up way too early on a Saturday morning and amble to Temple Bar to catch the CityLink (they are awesome, would recommend) and head to Galway. We get off the bus and go to the coffee shop next to the coach station (also go there, it’s called Wylde and they have the best chai latte I have drank in Ireland so far) and then we go to our hostel. DUN DUN DUN! There is no room for us. You see, Europe has this funny habit of not starting the week on their websites on Sunday like the U.S., so our hostel was booked for the wrong night. We were told good luck and we headed out to find a place to stay for the night otherwise we were just going to have to go home. After 2 hours of walking around and trying to find places to take us in, we finally got the last hotel room in the Galway Travelodge. I will not always swear by travelodge. After cooling off from the heat and changing out of our traveling clothes, we set off to the city center to explore and see what Galway had to offer. 

The people there are so nice! Everyone was chatting with us and giving us recommendations and teaching us Gaeilge and overall making us feel very welcome in this new city. For good food, I would recommend the Dail Bar, it was well priced and the food was good! After spending too many hours getting to know people downtown, we finally ventured home before our early wake up call for our bus tour.

We made it to the bus tour and were off (Gary if you’re reading this, hi!) to see many different places. Dunguaire Castle near Kinavra was so cool to see, and then we saw some other landmarks along the Wild Atlantic Way until we arrived in Doolin and had lunch there. The Irish stew was so good! After getting back on the bus, we finally made our way to the Cliffs of Moher. Wow. There were so many people and steps there that we were there for 3 hours and didn’t even get to see it all. The air was the cleanest I have ever breathed and it was amazing to look out at the ocean and know your home was on the other side. 

On the way home we drove along the Wild Atlantic Way and Gary told us about different roofs and walls (he was a big architecture guy I guess) and we just drove back to Galway. Sufficiently tired when arriving back at Galway, I realized that I still hadn’t found my ancestral castle. During this past Spring Break, my Great Aunt Sally had told me about this castle in Galway that belonged to one of my ancestors. I found it! It’s a bank now, which is funny because my dad, her nephew, is a banker back in the states. Quite the coincidence indeed. 

Overall, I would soooo recommend making your way to Galway, you won’t regret it!