Seannacht i nGaillimh, part 1

Easter Monday I went to Galway. As it was a bank holiday, everything was closed, and there was only one bus to Dublin. In it, I sat next to a man named Frank, who was very nice, and who talked about water sports and Spanish classes.

The countryside was lovely as ever. The fields here – as I may have said before – are small and bordered with hedges. Most of them are full of cows, or sheep. It’s rare to see any devoted to plants. The most vivid of these were the rape fields – I’d never seen so much YELLOW being produced by a living thing. Second to that, the most striking sights were the cemeteries, with the crosses done in black and white, the sun shining.

This was the farthest from Belfast I’ve been. I wish I had time to go to Cork, to go to England even... but no. I just have to come back. I don’t know how, but I will. I honestly hate travelling for the sake of travelling, but if, for instance, I could live here for another few months... well.

In Galway city, I got off (asking the bus driver “This is Galway, right?” just to make sure). If you’re looking for a city that excels in aesthetic beauty or interesting architecture, you’re not looking for Galway. Galway is lots of winding streets and boxy buildings, pigeons and seagulls, pubs and tourist traps and convenience stores. There are a few large shops that open into different streets in seemingly unconnected parts of the city. There was not a single time, over the course of the week, where I left the hostel and did not get lost. But it’s lovely if you find the riverside. The river in Galway is the Corrib, and there is a constant sound of wind and water behind the sounds of the city.

My first day I’d planned to go to the museum – however, they’d neglected to put “Oh, by the way, we’ll be closed for the next two months” on their website. So I wandered around the city instead. I saw the Spanish Arch, and went to a few shops, and went down to the river. I went down to the river at low tide, skirting discarded beer cans and a rusty old shopping trolley, and watched the swans swimming out in the sun.

I stayed in the Sleepzone hostel, near Erie Square. I highly recommend it, if only because they politely and patiently dealt with me:

Me: Can I buy a ticket for this here?

Hostel guy: You can book it and buy the ticket when you go to the bus station.

Me: What?

Hostel guy: *explains again, more slowly*

Me: Oh. So how much is it?

Hostel guy: €4.

Me: ... can you take a debit card?

Hostel guy: No, but there’s an ATM right around the corner *gives directions*

Me: *doesn’t understand directions at all, goes outside and wanders around, hoping to run into it, but doesn’t*

Me: *back inside* I can’t find it. Can I pay you later? Will you still have the slip thingies later?

Hostel guy: Yes, but really, it’s right around the corner... *goes out, points to different places, trying to explain*

Me: *wanders around for about twenty minutes, happens upon it by chance*

Hotel guy: You’re back, did you find it?

Me: Can you change a twenty?

If they can deal with this popping up at the desk every half hour, and sneezing on the brochures, and who knew what else I was guilty of that week, than they can deal with anything.

Anyway, as for that ticket, it was for a bus/walking tour of the Burren and the Cliffs of Mohr. Most tours are bus tours, where you sit warm and comfortable in the bus and pay lots of money for some tour guide to be all Irish at you and let you off every now and then to stand someplace scenic and take pictures.

I picked the one I did, because I wanted to take at least one tour while I was here, and because it was advertised as a walking tour. If I have to sit on a bus for five hours to get there, I don’t want to sit on a bus for five hours while I’m there. It wasn’t a huge group, and seemed mostly made up of students, though many of these were clearly city kids who’d never seen a cowpat in their lives (this serves to increase the tour’s entertainment value).

The Burren is an expanse of rocky hills, limestone, that stretches for over a hundred miles.  It’s crossed over with stone walls and full of cows. Again, it didn’t look too unfamiliar, with its rolling hills and criss-crossed weathered rock, until I climbed it and kept looking down on unfamiliar flowers and rocks. The Burren is famous because of its strange geology and its resulting diverse range of plants and flowers. We walked by hundreds of different small wildflowers, and hazel trees, and more. It's beautiful - stunningly wild and calm all at once.

The guide’s name was John. At the top of the hill, he suddenly waved his arms and ordered us all to lay down on the grass and the rock and be silent – absolutely silent – for thirty seconds. We did, and it was lovely listening to the wind and the birds instead of the other people. And he said, “There. Now you know what it’s like to be a cow in the mountains.”

In the house they’d turned over to tours, I bought tea and apple pie after the tour, and looked at the wall covered in the names and places of everyone who’d come on the walking tour. We met the guide’s dad, and the guide’s dad’s two dogs, who were so excited to see us that they jumped in the cattle trough. It was a lot of fun. Here you can see the two dogs (and the dad), from out the window as the bus drove away:

The bus rambled through the countryside. Among the notable sights we passed were old stone buildings (lots of them in this area of the country). We stopped at a passage tomb called Poll na mBrón. This was the first real prehistoric monument I’d seen that hadn’t been all but annihilated by later generations, as it was roped off. The name means “Hole of Sorrows." The tomb is several thousands of years old, from the Neolithic.

The Cliffs of Mohr would have been beautiful had they not been infested with tourists. I felt bad for just existing when I saw a huge, sweeping expanse of rock and sea with signs saying PLEASE DO NOT LITTER, KEEP IRELAND NATURAL, etc, with cigarette butts stubbed out in the verdant green beneath them. But here is what they look like, from a good angle:

The geology of the area is really interesting. But I won't make this any longer than it already is... so back to the city.

In the hostel, I got five nights of international exposure. I shared the room with Daphne the Swiss student violinist, four Germans whose names I didn’t get, a thoughtful, middle-aged Australian named Nirelle who was travelling the world, an elegant Brazilian who bemoaned the state of the local cuisine, and a pack of pink-accessorised Londoners who trashed the bathroom. And two Americans – one, a talkative New Yorker named Chelsea, determined to have as much fun as possible during the week she had on the island, and the other, her quieter friend of South American descent who was also from the States.

This last was named Christina. I noticed with some surprise that she didn’t sound as though she had an accent. I asked her where she was from.

“Northern Virginia,” she said. And so I encountered the one other Virginian I’ve met abroad, in a hostel in Galway.

It was talking with the others that gave me ideas for the rest of the week. I’d go to Inis Mor, which I hadn’t planned to see, but which seemed easier (i.e. less expensive) to get to than I’d thought. So the next day I went down to the tourist office, got another ticket, got on another bus, got down to the ferry, and rode the ferry to the Aran Islands.

I'll write about the Aran Islands later, and show you pictures. I hope you find serene scenes of windy hills and old rocks as breathtaking as I do.

One of the girls from the walking tour, at one of the stops...