It was evening when the bus deposited us, and our luggage, on the sidewalk of the Galway hostel. Now, hostels are funny places — a little unnerving and thrilling, both for the same reason: you never know who you’ll encounter or what you will find.
We’ll not romanticize. Our hostel room was a cramped hallway, lined with bunkbeds, with a closet of a bathroom thrown in for good measure. Our neighbors leave their musty shoes in the hallway and somebody has been cooking dinner with an excess of onion until we wept. Luckily, it was not a place we would spend much time except for sleeping. I pretty much just threw down my backpack on the bed and set off immediately to meet my friends for dinner.
GALWAY
Later that evening, we walked down to see a performance of Jimmy’s Hall at the Town Hall Theatre. Of all the theatre performances we’ve seen this semester, this one was by far my favorite. It tells the story of an Irishman who, after ten years in New York, returns in 1932 to his old hometown and opens a dancing hall. The show included a lot of talented dancers who performed reels and jigs and played a range of instruments, from drums to violin to flutes. It was all so cheerful I never expected it to end as tragically as it did.
I was weary as we returned down the streets, but there was something in the lamppost light reflecting on the rain puddles, something in the crisp cold of the night air, that felt fresh and invigorating in my lungs. I was tired but felt wide awake.
We haven’t had many free days on this trip, so this morning was a wonderful break for me to wake up at leisure. We actually had the opportunity to visit the famous Cliffs of Moher, but it would have taken the better part of our free day and I decided I’d rather have a look around Galway itself. We found this little cafe in the heart of Galway called Revive Cafe, where a group of us settled to have lunch. It was such a company of pleasant and warmhearted people that one couldn’t help but feel at ease around them.
Charlie Byrnes Bookstore
For any English majors going to Galway, Charlie Byrnes bookstore should be first on their list of things to see. You enter that bookstore and are immediately distracted by a wall, floor to ceiling, of beautiful ornate books. Gold, crimson, forest green, faded covers. You want to take each one down one by one and breathe their scent and stroke the pages, but you realize that every single wall in the room is filled, and the corners therein too; books stacked to your knees, shelves of poetry books holding up a table lined with books, and everywhere you turn there are books, books, and more books. Just when you think you’ve seen all the books there are to offer, you see a little nook or cranny that leads into another room filled, floor to ceiling, with books.
The literary fiction room was the hardest, because I could feel, from the moment I entered, how many books in this room were the sort of stories that resonate with you. We spent two and a half hours in that store, just in the roaming of it.
The Streets of Galway
When we at last tore ourselves away, we crossed to a cafe called Cafe Temple where, over lunch, we shared our book treasures one by one. I felt so inspired by everyone’s findings. I took one bite of vegan cheesecake and realized that cheesecake, by its very nature, is not meant to be vegan. Disappointment.
The rest of the afternoon, we wandered through different shoppes of Galway and picked up a few necessaries. When the sun fell, we met up with the rest of our group at a place called MacDonoughs for dinner. Afterwards, I went out with a few of my good friends to a place called The Quays, which was once a church so there are still archways and beautiful stained glass windows. We ordered Bailey’s coffee, which came served up in a glass mug and topped with whipped cream. There happened to be a vacant table upstairs, where we could sit and listen to the live musicians play all the Irish traditional tunes, like Leaving of Liverpool, Wagon Wheel, and Galway Girl.
It’s funny how I’ve spent so much time working to make this dream come true, and now that God has given it to me, all I’m afraid of is that it will end. God is slowly showing me how to slow down and be glad for the moment that has given to me. In that moment, I sat in a pub in Galway, sipping Irish coffee in the company of good friends, listening to talented musicians play live folk tunes. Together, flushed with a quiet happiness, we walked back through lamplit streets to our hostel — or as one of my friends said, our “Home away from home away from home!”
INISHMORE ISLAND
The ferry was already bustling with passengers when we boarded the ferry to the Aran Islands. I joined my friends up near the front of the passenger area, which was apparently a rookie mistake. Most of our number ended up seasick. We arrived in a harbor town at the edge of the bleak isle. It was bitterly cold. We huddled together with our backs to the wind while one of our professors collected our bike rentals.
The island of Inishmore is comparatively flat and bleak — there are not trees, just brush and thyme and heather growing right up to the rugged coast. Stone walls, overgrown in brambles and blackberry briars, crisscrossed the landscape. The fields were speckled with grazing cattle and gypsy horses that glanced ups and watched us sail past. We stopped only a few times —to see the ruins of an ancient monastic site, to scan the shoreline for seals that looked like stones, to watch a herd of stampeding sheep. When we had biked five miles to the far length of the island, we dismounted our bikes and set up the hill through little tourist shops and a wide hillside, up to the ancient fortress at the crest of the cliffs.
Dun Aonghas
The wind whipped around us as we ascended the last steps into the ruins of an old fortress, Dun Aonghas. A stone wall still surrounded the court, but moss grew between the cracks of stone beneath our feet. As we drew closer to the edge of the world, the sky grew until it was a vast view of the choppy Atlantic sea and an expanse of gray clouds sailing along the western horizon.
I looked southward, towards the island cliffs that stretched out and grew smaller until they were a distant blue. Waves crashed against the cliffs beneath us in a rage of white tips and swirling cerulean blue that dissipated to dark ocean and dripping foam. A seagull struggled against a gust of wind, hovering, faltering, rising at last.
… and home again.
We had a close call on the ferry back. Emily and Phoebe had gone to a sweater shoppe, and they still hadn’t come back when the rest of us boarded the boat. Ten minutes before departure, all of us were waiting in suspense, craning to catch sight of them on the harbor.
We caught a glimpse of them dashing down the long stretch of the shore. They were sprinting at first, but slowed with exhaustion. From inside the boat, we all began to gasp and cheer them on until, with only moments left before the ramp would close, we glimpsed them scurry up the ramp.
There we have it! Our three day adventure in Galway. Hope you all enjoyed going along with me. As much fun as it was to see the west coast, I really miss our cottages in Northern Ireland. It feels like coming home.
I’ll catch you all next week for our trip to the Antrim Coast!
<3 Olivia Grace
