The Galway Girl

Early on in the program we were making travel plans, it happened that Galway was one of the places that wasn’t making the cut. The city came with high recommendations and was on my list of places to visit, but when the Scotland trip came to, Galway got bumped.

Flash forward to Monday in class. The Nebraska professor (Dean Pierce) was raving about her weekend trip to Galway. The city has a vibrant downtown and it so happened that the City Arts Festival was going on. Well, that opened up a nice little door for us. We had looked at some of the preplanned tours that included Galway and it was only scheduled, Galway. So after raving about how great Galway was, she couldn’t turn us down when we offered a plan to visit this city. We were in.

After more research, we decided that we’d do a city tour on our own. It would be a heck of a lot cheaper, allow us more time in Galway and more freedom to see the city. We left Brookfield at 8 a.m. and to take the 9:25 bus out of Limerick. (Our trust in the bus system is waning after Tuesday night when a bus pulled a psyche out and forced us to walk three miles downtown).

The bus arrived at Galway just before noon. The first area we walked through was the Eyre Square, which was one of the coolest Town Centre’s I’ve seen. We then walked down Shop Street, which was a pedestrian shopping area. For a Wednesday afternoon, the area was extremely busy. The other interesting bit about the shopping district was the overwhelming amount of street performers. There were magicians, people singing over a guitar, balloon animals, henna tattoos and people selling knick-knacks. I thought I was back in New York with all the street handlers.

After a lunch, our group began to split up. Since I had done a lot of shopping already and wasn’t much into walking around the shops, I ended up going with Ramsey and Jillian to go sightseeing. We started the afternoon with a bus tour of the city. We saw St. Nicholas's Cathedral – the largest remaining medieval church still in use in Ireland, it was built in 1320. We also got an overview of the city’s history and saw some of the significant buildings in the city, including a thatched-roof house and the first Irish pub to allow music inside. In addition, we also drove by the University of Ireland College and St. Mary's College.

Another cool part of the trip was the journey along the coastline. It was a little cold, but you could see for miles. In addition, they had a bunch of cool houses that lined the coast painted in an array of colors. You can see this below.


On our way back, we cut back through Eyre Center and saw the monument where John F. Kennedy made a speech back in 1963. The next stop was the Arts Festival. They had a bunch of Joni Mitchell pictures hanging up in the main gallery. Interesting stuff about war and the prevailing human condition. We weren't able to do much else because the rest of the events started early in the afternoon, at night or involved children's productions.

Instead of being cultured on the arts, we went back to the Spanish Arches, which were built in 1584 and two of which are still standing. The tour guide said something about them briefly. It turns out that's all the time they deserved. They were cool, but not worth the extra walk. However, the arches were right next to the Galway City Museum. This was pretty cool as it contained more artifacts and memories about JFK's visit to Galway, which was 45 years ago. It also contained the history of the city and tales of the 12 Merchant Princes of Galway.


After a little shopping, the day was capped off with dinner at Mustard – a semi-fancy burger restaurant that seemed reasonable. One of the first things we noticed was the friendly and helpful attitude of our waitress. Up to this point of the trip, the service we received at restaurants was mediocre at best. After giving us our food, we typically would not see our waiter/waitresses until we asked them for the check or flagged them down for more drinks. Anyway, we figured something was up. First, we could tell that our waitress didn’t have an accent. Then she returned to our table to ask how our food was (even though we were the only people in the basement) and finally when we told her that we were opting for desert she responded with “Awesome.”

All this could only mean one thing — she was American.

When I went up to pay the bill, I asked if she was from Galway. (I didn’t want to assume she was from the States) She responded that she was from Nebraska. Boy howdy! Now we’re talking. It ends up she went to Omaha Roncalli and graduated from UNO in December. Not wanting to get a real job, she got a job in Galway. After a while, she saw my Husker Law shirt and it all come together. The point of the story: Even the nice people you meet in foreign countries are from Nebraska. (Also, the other great part of the story was I had an ostrich burger. Tasted good, but had too many toppings

This experience was much more pleasant that the first time I thought I ran into a fellow Nebraskan. Saturday in Cork, we were at a bar and a guy had a shirt with Nebraska on it. I asked if he was from Nebraska: Nope. Did he get the shirt there? Nope. Blah, blah blah. It was only after the conversation was over that I was informed that the guy I was talking to was gay and he was hitting on me big time. Oops. Oh well. At least I eventually ran into a real Nebraskan.

We have class again on Thursday, then we fly off to Scotland. This weekend is going to be awesome. On top of the trip to St. Andrews, we are also going to Edinburgh and Glasgow. Then it’s back to Limerick and the last week of classes. Sigh.

And as for the title of this post, it is to one of the best Irish pub songs. Enjoy:

Cheers,

LJLA