Ain't Never Seen Nothing Like A Galway Fog

Everyone loves Galway, that's what an old woman at the Guinness Storehouse told me. Too bad my first experience there was perfectly horrendous - an exhausting four hour bus drive from Dublin, a nauseating bus tour in Aran Islands, the Cliffs of Moher leaden with fog... It didn't help going along with two hundred other international students who were already arranged into tight cliques, leaving me in an awkward limbo between groups and not really fitting in. Here are some bleak, foggy pictures of my first trip to Galway.

Follow the brick road into the clouds and ye shall find a pot o' dew. At Cliffs of Moher.

Aran Islands. Fog is so thick, fish are probably swimming in there.

Around Halloween 2011, while my housemates were planning a vodka monopoly weekend (read blogpost "Our Lady of Guadalupe Residence") I decided to give Galway another go, this time with a smaller group from UCD. The old woman was right, I did end up enjoying Galway. Not as much as Dublin, but Galway was good, and spending Halloween there really spiced up the atmosphere.

The Cliffs of Moher (in County Clare, south of Galway) are the top most visited tourist locations in Ireland. The big deal about this place is that there are like lots of cliffs. And it's like totally really high. And there's water like far far down there. And the water is totally like all splashing onto the cliffs like. Ok, it's hard for me to explain it so here are some pictures.

Cliffs of Moher. Apologies for the poor quality.

A lot better view of O'Brien Tower

Aran Islands in the distant horizon.

It may not seem like much but the visit may be more meaningful for you if I said a few episodes of Father Ted was filmed here and maybe (just maybe) a scene in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was filmed here too.

The O'Brien's Tower on the Cliffs of Moher is more of a viewing point for tourists than anything else. You pay two euro to go about five metres above ground level and you get to see this -

- and perhaps bits of the Aran Island on a fine sunny day. Not worth two euro unless the cliffs are very crowded and you want to remove yourself from the danger of being pushed over into the sea.

I should warn you to pack an emergency sick bag on the way to the Cliffs of Moher (located in County Clare) from Galway. The long and winding road tends to curve into itself like soft rubber (or so it felt while I slept), and the bus has no choice but to break every three seconds to bend corners. Some people just can't handle their guts being swished around like that for extended periods of time. The scenery is lovely though, so hopefully your stomach will stay intact when you shotgun the window seat and distract yourself by looking at the hand-built stone walls and farm animals.

The Aran Islands consist of three islands - Inishmore, Inishmaan, and Inisheer. Inishmore is the one you should be looking at going, and there is more than one way to have a look around. The worst way is by a tour bus. After 40 minutes on the ferry sailing through the rough seas of West Ireland, you do not want to spend another hour bumping along a narrow road on a bus. Rent a bike for a day instead, and bike around the island at your own pace. Or try the more romantic course of hiring a horse and carriage, with a Man of Aran as your personal footman. I would have taken a picture of this but I was too busy trying to look graceful pedalling behind them in the rain.

As I mentioned, I visited Galway during Halloween, so I got to see the Halloween parade. It was a bit crowded and all the people were high just from dressing up (particularly Wallies/Waldos... so many of them...) kept shoving me around so these are the best photos I could take.

So much fun being a gymnast.

The back of someone's head. I mean an out-of-focus Halloween float.

At the end of the trip I was happy I gave Galway another shot. However, unless Father Dougal McGuire asks me to tea on Craggy Island, I don't think it's somewhere I want to go back to yet.