Adam Turtle, Freelance Web Design in Belfast, Northern Ireland
Since1986
City Break in Galway
- 26th June, 2009
- filed under: Travel
- No comments yet
I took a little trip this week to Galway, in the west of Ireland. Myself and a few friends packed up the car and headed off on Tuesday evening from Belfast for the 4 hour drive to the west coast.
Getting there was a long drive. I borrowed my Mum’s sat-nav just to try it out. It was good, as it got us there, but the sat-nav took us through some very strange places.
We took a brief stop in Clones to eat some picnic sandwiches and then straight on to Galway.
Arrival
First impressions of the city were very positive. The weather was great, and we arrived quite late in the evening, 11:30pm or so. While being a very modern city, it has a quaint “old town” feeling to it.
It’s very lively, and has a lot of traditional music bars dotted along it’s central pedestrian zone. Street performers and buskers are plentiful and the general atmosphere is friendly and relaxed.
Accommodation
We checked into Barnacles, which is a nice little hostel right in the city centre. This proved to be both a good move and a bad move. The room itself was fine, a little warm but couldn’t really be helped and the price wasn’t so bad but pubs in Galway stay open quite late so there was lots of buzz and noise outside until very late. The streets finally cleared at about 3:30am, so getting to sleep was difficult.
Galway City
There’s plenty to see and do in the city. We didn’t have a lot of time to check out everything, but we took in a lot of the city centre, enjoyed a beer or two in several of the pubs with live music and generally enjoyed the great weather we were fortunate to have.
I found it surprising how busy this place was. It seems that every night of the week is a night out, unlike Belfast where you’d find most people out on a Thursday or Saturday. Galway is constantly buzzing with young and old packing out the bars onto the streets.
The city itself is beautiful and a pleasure to walk through. It’s main thoroughfares are for pedestrians only so you can while away the day walking through the narrow streets. The city boasts a big cathedral, which is a good place to park as all-day parking is only €5 and it’s just a short distance from the main streets.
There are canals running alongside the river with ducks and swans, and several old bridges which make great photography stops.
Cliffs of Moher
On our first day in the west coast, we drove down to Co. Clare to the Cliffs of Moher. These impressive cliffs rise over 200m vertically from the sea, and are one of Ireland’s most visited sights. It was an awesome view, but the drive to the cliffs is something else. The sat-nav claimed it was a 25-mile drive from Galway, which turned out to be a complete lie. It was more like 50 miles and with some very windy roads which meant a 1.5 hour drive.
The cliffs are spectacular. There’s a safety fence to stop you getting too close to the edge, but a little further round is a privately owned area, which despite the warnings was crowded too. This part has no safety measures whatsoever and walking about a foot away from a 700ft drop made me feel more than a little nervous.
Beach
In the evening, we came back to Galway and spent an hour or two at the beach. Surprisingly, for Ireland, the water wasn’t terribly cold and lots of people were relaxing on the beach and taking in the rays.
Afterwards, we had dinner at a great seafood restaurant. I’m not much of a fish eater but the food was great and wasn’t overly expensive.
Finished up the day in a nearby pub enjoying some band playing Beatles covers with a pint of Kilkenny. Great day.
Day Two: Connemara
Just north of Galway is the beautiful district of Connemara. If ever there’s a cliché of Ireland, this place surely has to be it. As usual, our GPS friend lead us down the smallest roads you can imagine, just about big enough for one car to drive down.
Here you’ll find sheep wandering the roads without a care in the world for passing cars. During the 20 or so miles we did around this part of the country, we must have stopped about 10 times for photographs, and we could have stopped for more if we had the time.
I’ve lost my camera charger, so my camera has been lying at home with a dead battery for the last month or two. I can honestly say that I haven’t really missed it as I appreciated taking in the sights without the need to snap a photo every 5 seconds. The photos I’ve posted here were taken by my friends.
Kylemore Abbey
Kylemore Abbey is just one of the sights in Connemara. It’s in a beautiful spot, but it was a little pricey to go inside for a look, so we just took a walk around the grounds. It’s a fairly modern castle, built in the 19th century and looks like something straight out of a history book.
Killary Harbour
After the castle, we took a disappointing trip to Killary Harbour at the foot of a fjord. The scenery was nice, but the harbour itself was anything but spectacular and coupled with a 40-minute round trip was frankly a waste of time. My advice: don’t bother if you’re visiting this area.
Westport
Our last stop of the day was the small town of Westport. I’d got a tip the day before we left from someone who claimed that Westport was “lovely”. I’m not disputing that – it is very nice, but we struggled to find things to do there and as we weren’t staying until the evening we ended up mainly using it as a place to eat. It’s got a small-town charm but even the tourism office found it difficult to point out interesting things to do other than the holy mountain of Croagh Patrick, where St Patrick famously drove away all the snakes in Ireland.
Home
By dinner time, it was back to Belfast. The sat-nav did a wonderful job of taking us through the back-end of nowhere before eventually winding up in Enniskillen and a fairly straight drive home to Belfast.
All in all, a wonderful little break to see a side of Ireland you rarely see in the North. Having said that, it’s always nice to return home to the spides, millies and casual racism of south Belfast.
Photos are on my Flickr.
Add your comment