By

The rushing water sparkles when the sun can dodge one of the clouds trying to block it. Children laugh and scramble amidst teenagers sitting and chatting on the lawn of a park. Ireland’s west-coast city claims itself to be “probably the best place on Earth” according to a sign leaning on a gift-store window. I wouldn’t go quite that far, but it is pleasant. Just exceptionally pleasant.

I manage to not have a real conversation with anyone (beyond “Guinness, please” or “I’ll have the beef stew”) for over 48 hours. I am incredibly solitary, but it’s not a bad thing. I begin to wonder if this is a change my travels have wrought in me. I am utterly alone, but not the slightest bit lonely.

My biggest complaint about Galway is actually with the lodgings. The first hostel I stayed at just had young people watching movies all night and evening, and in my room there was a family with a young child! I was shocked, mostly because the typical hostel environment is really not a good one for kids, but also because of the inconsideration it showed for all the other people in the room. Inevitably, the kid woke up screaming and asking for his mom on the bunk below him several times that night. Hostels with age limits (the good ones are typically 18 - 35) are definitely the way to go. I resolved to change hostels in the morning.

Of course, you know what happens next. All of my top choice hostels were full, so I ended up at a place I hadn’t vetted much. I got boarded with another family, though with slightly older kids, whose complaints were actually words (“I’m hungry” or “It’s cold in here”) but they were still loud enough to make it through my ear plugs. It also turns out that this second place was family-run, which I would usually find exciting, except that the teenage son did nothing but watch TV very loudly in the hostel’s common area all day. So there was really no place to talk with anyone from the hostel who wasn’t in my room. Talk about killing the hostel vibe.

I spent a lot of time in Galway just walking around and taking in the sites - their mall is built around the city’s old stone wall! - and I really enjoyed my time there. But after two nights of subpar hostel experiences, I decided to move on. Sadly, all of Limerick’s hostels were full. I resolved to go back to Dublin, as I believed that some things between that city and I had remained unsaid.