Galway Plus

This morning, the Galway weather forecast called for a partly cloudy morning with no precipitation. It expected there to be rain all afternoon and evening.

Armed with that information, I decided to take a walk in the morning. The walk came highly recommended by both the walking tour app and the tour book I use. I reserved sights clustered around central Galway for after the walk, during the expected rain.

Salthill Promenade

The recommended walk was along the Salthill Promenade. The vast majority of the five-kilometre promenade (more than three miles) is not in Galway, but rather, as the name suggests, in Salthill. Hence the “Plus” in the title of this post.

I couldn’t tell just by looking at the surroundings where Galway ends and Salthill begins.

The promenade runs beside Galway Bay. On one side sits the shore. The shore consists of some beaches, some rocky areas, some small piers and one long pier, a small, grass and shrub park with a Famine memorial, and, for one stretch, a stone seawall.

On the other side of the promenade, a road extends for most of its length. Undistinguished low-rise and mid-rise buildings sit on the other side of most of that road.

Rather than the road, there’s a large sports field on the landward side of the Galway end of the promenade. A golf course rests on the landward side of the promenade at the last stretch of the promenade before its western* terminus in Salthill.

(*I have less difficulty in knowing where north, south, east, and west are here than in many cities that aren’t my hometown. The water in Galway is generally to the south. My siblings understand how that helps.)

Despite being in Salthill, the name of the golf course is the Galway Golf Club. So maybe I wouldn’t have offended the locals if I left out the “Plus” in the title of this post.

Beyond that Salthill terminus of the promenade sits a parking lot filled with RVs. I know that sounds like an RV park, but I can’t call it that. I saw nary a tree nor a bush there. It contained only RVs parked cheek to jowl. So it was an RV parking lot, not an RV park. I don’t care if the owners or occupants disagree. I just don’t.

Throughout my walk, the wind blustered, ramming sea air through my nostrils, as if it feared I wouldn’t get my fill otherwise. Despite the forecast, the clouds thickened and I weathered a few sprinkles later in the morning.

Now that I think about it, the portion of the walk in Galway rather than Sandhill probably has a name other than Sandhill Promenade, or no name at all. And that section isn’t really a promenade, but, rather a walking and cycling path. But that detail is too irrelevant for me to check.

Galway Proper

Lunch

After my long walk, I went to a restaurant in the “Latin Quarter” of Galway, just steps from my hotel. There, I had some of the tastiest mussels I’ve ever eaten. The restaurant doesn’t include the usual partner to moules, frites, with the dish. Instead, it provides bread to soak up the wonderful creamy wine sauce.

The menu lists two different prices for the mussels. I asked the server about the two sizes. She said, “The small is very large. The large is very, very large.”

I ordered the small/very large portion. I left stuffed. That portion would likely sate a couple unless they were particularly gluttonous. I don’t know how big an army the large portion serves. If your job includes provisioning an army you should ask.

St. Nicholas’ Collegiate Church

The medieval St. Nicholas Collegiate Church dates from 1320.

Stained glass fills some of its windows, but they are replacements installed only in the nineteenth century. It took them a while, but the church replaced the previous stained glass windows destroyed by Oliver Cromwell in the seventeenth century.

That wasn’t Cromwell’s only destruction in the church. Beneath one window rests the “Lynch window tomb,” honouring the Lynch family. (James Lynch was a mayor of Galway in the late fifteenth century and Steven Lynch, believed to be James’ son, was a mayor in the early sixteenth century.) On each side of the window indentation, a carved stone angel hangs on the wall. But the angels are headless. It’s believed that Cromwell’s forces decapitated them in 1652. Cromwell was a violent dude when it came to Catholics.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a complete picture of the decapitated angels. When I was there, people were busy setting up a lace exhibition. Small displays sat in front of a portion of one of the angel wings on both sides of the window sill. I posted a picture here of what I was able to capture.

The person who took my entry fee wore a “volunteer” badge. He was very talkative and he, unasked, told me a lot about the history of the church and provided information about its features. He also handed me an information sheet with most of that information.

One of the things he told me is that legend has it that James Lynch hanged his son for not being sufficiently devout. I made a mental note to make sure I wasn’t overly irreverent while in the church.

About that lace exhibition, the talkative volunteer said that the church is used for a lot of exhibits and concerts. It’s nice to see a church being put to at least some productive use, isn’t it? Sorry. I wasn’t going to be irreverent, was I?

The church is particularly proud of one of its past visitors. Christopher Columbus worshipped there in 1477.

On Fridays, a tchotchke market fills one of the streets beside the church. Today is Friday in my real-time. I don’t know what day it’ll be when you read this post. That’s just the way time works. Don’t blame me.

I think the tchotchke market is bigger on Saturdays.

Christopher Columbus Monument

Speaking of Christopher Columbus, Galway has a statue honouring him. The people of Genoa donated it to Galway to commemorate Columbus’s 1477 visit. It’s right across the street from my hotel.

Being across from my hotel, I saw the statue several times during my time in Galway, but I didn’t know what it was until today. When I researched what to do today, without looking at a map while doing so, it didn’t occur to me that it could be the Christopher Columbus monument.

I visited some stuff first and then followed Google Maps to the statue. I was surprised to find myself across the street from my hotel.

The reason I didn’t realize it was a Chris Columbus statue when I saw it before is because when I read “Christopher Columbus monument” in my tour book I formed a mental image of a jaunty Chris Columbus figure. It’s not that. It’s an abstract shape on a stone cube pedestal. I hadn’t read it until today, but engraved on the pedestal are the words, “On these shores around 1477 the Genoese sailor Christopher Columbo found sure signs of land beyond the Atlantic.“

I don’t know what those sure signs were. Did Chris think that Ireland lay beyond the Atlantic?

Galway City Museum

The City of Galway runs the Galway City Museum, but it’s not specifically about the city.

The museum is a smallish space occupying three floors.

The ground floor offered exhibits on prehistoric times of the Aran Islands. That was coincidentally apropos as I visited the largest of the Aran Islands, Inishmore, yesterday and passed by the other two on the ferry.

The exhibits on this floor were scant on artifacts, but provided a lot of text panels in Gaelic and English.

In a small room on the ground floor ran a fifteen-minute film displaying the scenery of the Aran Islands as it is today. The film spanned all three islands, so I got to view the ones I didn’t visit yesterday.

A large portion of the film displayed aerial footage, probably captured by drone. So even on Inishmore, I got to see it from an angle I couldn’t witness in person yesterday.

The film contained no words, either spoken or text. Instead, the soundtrack comprised ambient sounds, including waves crashing, winds gusting, birds cawing, ferrying engines running, and voices of people on a sailboat, but muffled and distant, making the words entirely indistinguishable.

The first floor, i.e., the floor above the ground floor (curse European floor numbering), contained exhibits on Gaelic history and anthropology. Again, the displays included artifacts and text panels, and were only slightly less artifact-sparse than the ground floor.

Also on this floor was an exhibit of more recent Galway history, including revolution, civil war, the home rule question, democracy, and peace. 

The top floor had two rooms open to the public, both were dedicated to science. The museum titled the first room “Superhuman.” It was dedicated to medical research and development in Ireland. The other room had some exhibits on oceanography. 

An atrium spans the ground floor to the top floor of a section of the Galway City Museum. A Galway Hooker hangs from the ceiling.

No! It’s not that. That would be too gruesome.

A Galway Hooker is a type of fishing boat. There are four Galway Hookers subtypes, all hook and line fishing vessels.

I used the past tense above to describe the museum’s exhibits because I think at least a couple of them are temporary, maybe all. So if you go to the Galway City Museum they may not all still be there when you do

Etc.

Intermittent rain fell throughout the afternoon and evening, nevertheless, I persisted in my pursuit to see the sights of Galway. In addition to the ones described above, I visited some that are noteworthy, but not worthy of a separate section in this post.

One of those doesn’t deserve its own section here only because it already got a section in the post on my first day in Galway. If you read that post, you might remember that I cut my visit to the Galway Cathedral short because of a liturgy that was about to commence. If you didn’t read that post then you won’t remember that unless you have special powers.

I went back to the cathedral today and saw some of the things I didn’t see or didn’t notice on my first visit. For example, mounted on the walls are carvings by a local artist of the stations of the cross.

One side chapel has a large mosaic of the resurrection of Christ. Take a look at the picture of it here. In particular, look at the small circular mosaic to the right of the resurrection mosaic. That’s not a depiction of Christ. That’s John F. Kennedy. Holy JFK.

I also learned today that the beautiful arched carved wood ceiling in the cathedral is made of Canadian cedar. Not just any cedar, Canadian cedar. Did I mention it’s Canadian? (You can take the old kvetch out of Canada, but you can’t take Canada out of the old kvetch.) Oh, and the pews are mahogany but never mind that.

The other noteworthy, but not section-worthy sights included:

• Salmon Weir Bridge. The tour book I use referred to the Salmon Weir Bridge over the River Lee as the Galway version of the Bridge of Sighs in Venice. It led from the courthouse to the no-longer-standing jail. Today, people apparently fish off it, but none while I was there. In season, salmon swim up the River Lee tumbling under the bridge.
• Magdalene Laundry Statue. This is a weird statue and hard to find, despite hiding in plain sight. It commemorates the “fallen women” (women who became pregnant out of wedlock) forced to work in the laundries run by Catholic religious orders. Enough said.
• Hooker Sculpture. A Hooker Sculpture adorns one end of Eyre Square. If you read the City Museum section above, you probably guessed it’s not a monument to prostitutes. It represents a Galway Hooker fishing vessel. The metal wings of the sculpture represent the boat’s sails.
  Zoom in and look at the graffiti on the wall to the right of the sculpture. At least one person in Galway is not prepared to welcome King Charles (Windsor) to Galway.
• Beneath a building suspended over it, sits the excavated ruins of a 13th-century building. It’s the hall of the Norman lord Richard du Burgo. I have no idea why he was called the Red Earl or if that sobriquet refers to somebody completely different.
• Wilde & Vilde Statue. Statues of Oscar Wilde and Eduard Vilde sit facing each other on a bench of what looks like marble. The Irish writer Oscar Wilde and the Estonian writer Eduard Vilde never met. I don’t know how much the similarity of their last names had to do with their statues being placed together on a bench. The piece, a recast of a work cast in 1999 of a sculpture in Tartu, Estonia, was a gift from Estonia to commemorate Ireland’s entry into the EU in 2004.

Penultimate Day

Regrettably, this trip is rapidly winding down. Tomorrow morning I head back to where I started the trip, Dublin. Then, the following morning, if all goes according to plan, I catch I flight back home.