Galway: Medieval streets, Thin Lizzy, rubbish bins and fine walks

I spent the last week rambling around Galway, Ireland, chatting with people and exploring as it is the location of the next [murmur] project. It’s a fine place to walk, with a medieval cozy core of twisting streets that gave me, used to Toronto’s predictable grid, a good dose of disorientation. After a few days, the map of Galway came together in my head, one of the great joys of exploring a new city, realizing disparate places and locations are actually one street over from each other. Galway is on the west coast of the country on the mouth of the roaring River Corrib. For a city of just 72,000 people it has an impressive 3 story high civic museum, a key element we have yet to achieve here in Toronto. These famous swans at the mouth of the river as it flows into Galway Bay are extremely friendly and will pose for their close up without hesitation. The days were both bone chilling cold and strangely warm, bundled up one minute and able to go for long runs along the seafront without a jacket or sweater the next. I was even invited to go for a swim in the Atlantic, which seemed like too-radical a public space intervention, so I settled on just putting my hand in, because that’s what you should do when you come to the ocean.

What follows is a quick photo tour of Galway and environs.

There is a good network of pedestrianized streets in central Galway. The bollards above will lower in the early morning to allow delivery trucks to service the shops, then they disappear by mid-morning. The rest of the day and night people are free to walk on car free cobblestone. There is a range of services available on the pedestrian streets, not just tourist shop or cafes, as is the case on some overly gentrified pedestrian streets in some cities.

Areas where cars can drive blend in with the pedestrian areas as they tend to go slow enough that you can cross (sometimes) — other times they whip around tight corners catching people by surprise. Pedestrians have to be much more nimble in free-flowing Europe than in rule obsessed North America. Which is better, I’m not sure.

These small laneways are what really start to stich the city together. First day of exploring is all high streets, but on following days the lanes and passages bring it all together. The medieval character of Galway is expressed in bits of old building facades that are preserved around town. Old crests and stone signs are everywhere.

I found this nearly deserted passageway that led from the busy bus and train station area across the rail bridge to the suburban side of Galway. Another good thing about exploring a new city is not knowing the invisible boundaries you’re not supposed to cross. Later, at a pub recounting my zig and zags through the city to some new friends who showed me the Real Ireland afterwards (packed drum and bass night in a brightly lit pub that is an Irish-speaking-only old-man-bar the other 6 days of the week) told me this is a notorious walkway where people often get mugged (ambushed by people stalking both sides of the bridge). I didn’t see any of that, but in retrospect the body language of the few people I passed was guarded, unlike the easy way people pass through the rest of the city. While I don’t want to diminish bad events that may have taken place there, I suspect it’s like notorious spots in Toronto, where just a few events can give a place a bad reputation that takes years to shake.

Contrary to the popular idea of Europe, there is sprawl, and there is big box blight. If it wasn’t for the left hand driving and sound of tiny diesel engines, this could have been any suburban arterial strip in the GTA (though only a kilometer from the centre of town). In a disturbing way this landscape is comforting — a little bit of home in the cultural colonial superpower that is Ireland.

Canals run adjacent to the River Corrib and have pathways beside them that seem to be as utilitarian as they are pleasant and pretty. One thing I have discovered in much of the UK and Ireland is they sure know how to make playgrounds bleak. Perhaps it makes the kids stronger later in life, but at least the graffiti here makes the concrete blocks a little more interesting. The grafitti in the top picture is the back of the Roisin Dubh (row-sheen dove), the indie rock/Lee’s Palace equivolent bar where I was told the son of late Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott bartends. I always forget Thin Lizzy is an Irish band, but the kids still go nuts when The Boys Are Back in Town comes on and he’s regarded as a bit of rock and roll hero. Inside (and inside many public buildings) the smell of burning peat and coal is enough to remind that these are not the recreated Irish pubs we’re used to in Toronto.

The fine rubbish bins of Galway, compete with ashtrays that make me want to start smoking just to try them out, are generally ad free — but some are asking for it, while others have a subtle sponsorship above an area map, marking the sponsor location. Spar is a conveniences store chain.

Signage outside of the city is wonderful chaos, and encourages further exploration.