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I awake astonishingly to clean blue sky and sun. I am getting the hang of this city. It's really a small downtown with a
maze-like atmosphere. I know the shortcut through the Catholic Church (go to the left of the Shrine for Mary). I know where the post office is. The Catholic abbey church and the like. In fact, I've had a sort of desire to check
out the Catholic churches on this trip - to just sit and soak up some ambience I guess. Nothing magical yet, but they are pleasantly quiet sanctuaries - except one visit today which includes a noisy, toothless old crone who sits at the back of the church and appears homeless. She asks me where I am from when I try to
slip by her. When I tell her, she starts singing "Yankee Doodle." I leave quickly. The water at my B+B has an off flavor that taints the tea, so I am dying for a cup of good coffee. I stop at a little coffee shop and the coffee is fresh-brewed and delicious, unlike the Nescafe that they usually try to give you at the B+B's. The scone is moist and delicate and the edition of U.S.A. Today makes for a great interlude in this busy city. The only disappointment is the cigarette smoke - everybody seems to smoke in Ireland! And the omnipresent Irish talk radio. Almost all the discussion on these
shows seems to deal with social and moral issues directly related to the Catholic Church. No matter where you are in Ireland in the morning, you have to deal with talk radio. The Irish seem to be as enamored of it as Americans. After strolling the city again and checking
out the Spanish Arch (a relic of the old walled city of Galway, circa 1540) among other things, I take a pleasant bus tour of 1 hour around Galway with two other people, an English couple. Off season is great. Our tour guide is Paddy whose son is a lawyer in Chicago. He
likes Chicago, and we have a pleasant chat about my native city. Galway is a very fast-growing city of around 60,000, and the urban sprawl - or ribbon development as the Irish call it - is ugly, including some six-story subsidized apartments that are scheduled for demolition. We also pass a park set aside by the city for "Travelers," those nomadic peoples of Ireland who must not be confused with
gypsies. They now travel by car and trailer, but they used to move about by horse and barrel-top wagon. I soak up the sun again in Eyre Square, JFK Park - so named because JFK spoke at that park in 1961, the first sitting American president to visit Ireland. Again I notice in the park a group of about eight men who are obviously intoxicated. They are drinking from quart bottles of muscatel. A few of them work the crowd for money and cigarettes. They are drunk both Thursday and Friday. I watch one fellow lean over the back of his bench and vomit. In fact, on my way to the downtown on Friday morning, I saw one old guy completely passed out in the middle of some low bushes on the edge of the JFK park while some other
stubble-faced and toothless fellow was nodding and mumbling on a bench near him. This is really the first public drunkenness I've witnessed in Europe, so the rumors of Ireland's drinking problem may be true. Drinking and driving is apparently a problem in Ireland, and there has been a movement growing in Parliament
to tighten the laws against DUI. However, the firmness of the Pub tradition is such that it's unlikely there will be a change. Pub owners were interviewed for TV, and of course they were vehemently against any change in the laws. It's more than a little scary to think of drivers on these narrow winding, walled roads at night after downing a few pints of Guinness. After trying fish and chips - I try their ray - at the recommended Conlon's, I take in the musical 'The Hired Man," which is set in northwest England at the turn of this century. It is staged at the Galway Town Hall Theatre. This turns out to be a very entertaining play, superb singing, choreography, acting, and orchestra. Most of this large cast comes from the Galway area, but a handful are from the east coast of Ireland, and one cast member is an American transplant. The night has cooled when I emerge from the theater, so I walk briskly home and am too tired to enter into my journal for the day. Lots of walking today but no biking. |
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