Tynanwoods Day Nine

October 23, 2006
Day Nine: Galway by the Bay; of rooks and rookeries


If Dublin is Ireland's New York (I'm assuming it is, we'll find out next week), Galway would be its San Francisco. Located directly across the country on a gorgeous bay, it's sophisticated and international, filled with students and the babble of unfamiliar tongues. Though the guidebook says the population is only 65,000, like Limerick it felt five times larger.

We hung out for a bit in John F. Kennedy park, an ultra-modern greenspace two city blocks square, where the kids played on the most surreal looking jungle gym I've ever encountered -- like it had been designed by Joan Miro with help from Rube Goldberg.

We ate lunch at a sandwich shop inside a food court -- Cole, finally, found a meal he enjoyed -- and wandered along Shop Street and High Street, parts of the old city turned into a open air pedestrian shopping mall replete with pubs and restaurants, buskers and street entertainers.

The gravitional rift proved especially strong here, as Xtina was sucked into every shoe and woolen shop along the strand. Even Cole as affected when we passed a toy store, where we procured a magnetic chess set for Skippy, and a store displaying Halloween costumes.

At one point both kids physically restrained Xtina from entering yet another shoe shop, leaning against her with all their might. She pretended to comply, then cleverly misdirected us all to a joke shop and ran back to the store from which she'd been barred.

Another session at an Internet cafe, where I filed some stuff that was due and Xtina did some research for a story. After a while Xtina left and took the kids back to the Joan Miro playground. When I rejoined them she was sitting on a park bench with her laptop, surfing the Net. Finally, we had discovered the land of unprotected WiFi.

We went into a pub located on the site where Nora Joyce (nee Barnacle) was born, or at least within driving distance of it. While I was up at the bar ordering our usual (Guinness for me, Smithwick's Ale for Xtina, Seven Up -- with ice -- for the kids), an elderly couple walked into the pub and made their way to a table near the bar. They appeared to be regulars.

Elderly man: Give me a tall glass a' the black, Michael.

Barkeep: Sure, sure. But would ye mind if I put a white top on it?

Earlier, enroute to Galway, we stumbled upon Kilmcduagh Monastery, a series of crumbling buildings dating from the 11th to 14th centuries, alongside a large graveyard with headstones ranging from to that era to present day. The Irish Tourism Mafia hasn't gotten to this place yet; you could simply park and walk around it, or go inside some of the buildings by asking for the key from the woman at the B&B across the street. This monastery featured a free-standing peaked tower 60 meters tall and probably 10 meters wide at the base, with an entrance roughly 12 meters from the ground. It was exactly the sort of tower they used for locking away princesses in fairy tales, though in this case it was a place for monks to take refuge when the monastery was under attack. (Now it is home to a flock of crows.) The fact the monks felt it was worth the time, expense, and difficulty of building this tower indicates just how perilous life was in those times, when a visit from the wrong band of strangers could conclude with your head on a pike.