Tag: Salthill Promenade

Lazy Galway Friday

Not much to report today. After being on the move for tours the past three days, I was somewhat lazy today. I didn’t leave the flat until almost noon, walked down to Eyre Square to catch the sightseeing bus, and took the hour-long ride around the city.

This is a view of the Galway Cathedral, down along the Corrib River. I thought we would be stopping there, and I could go see inside, but I was wrong. Have to walk down there tomorrow.
This is the Salthill Promenade, as featured in the ubiquitous Steve Earle song Galway Girl. It’s a nice, long walk along the shore of Galway Bay.

After the tour, I went walking along Shop Street to get a couple pictures that I hadn’t managed on my walking tour.

This is a cool example the kind of re-use and recycling of architecture. The owner of this building, when renovating the windows, damaged some of the plastered-over walls, and found some pieces of medieval architecture and decoration. It has a decidedly Spanish/Andalusian feel, as Galway did a lot of trade with Spain.
Okay. Remember, I said back here that I had a story about the weird little carving on Lynch’s Castle? Here’s a better picture of it. The story is that a previous house owned by the Lynch family caught fire, and a child was saved by a pet monkey, so they put this carving on the new house they built. One clever critic said the artist must have never seen a real monkey before. The local folk maintain that he must never have seen a child, either.

What else did I do today? I found that, one block over from me, there’s a movie theatre, and I went to see Solo: A Star Wars Story. I got to meet my AirBnB landlady1 and found her to be a very charming lady. I got to dodge a number of folks campaigning for either side of the referendum happening today. And I got reminded that this is a university town, so if I want to get into a popular pub on a Friday night to have dinner and listen to music, I better get there early.

Tomorrow is my last day in Galway. I’ve got to get to the cathedral, to St. Nicholas’s church, and the museum. I can try again tomorrow for a seat at a good music pub.

  1. She’d been in London for her nephew’s wedding when I arrived, so I had only met her husband. [↩]