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It’s never too late to be a tourist

By kathleenmccarthy1

This weekend, I had my first visitor from back home come to see me in Galway. My friend from GW who is studying in Florence, Italy came to visit me during her fall break. She arrived just after I turned in two midterm papers so I was exhausted but very excited for the weekend ahead. The first night she was here was Halloween, so she got a very intense and authentic first taste of Galway. Since Galway’s population is heavily made up of students, the streets are full of people on Halloween dressed up for the occasion. I think this was a great first day to be in Galway because it really gave my friend an idea of the personality that Galway has. The next day, I let my friend explore Galway a bit while I went to class and then in the afternoon we went to the Galway City Museum. After visiting the museum with my friend, I wished that I had gone earlier. Not only did it teach me a lot about the city I’ve been living in for over two months in a very short period of time, it was also free. That night we had an amazing dinner and took in some live music at one of the pubs in town but were in bed early because we had a much bigger adventure planned for the next day.

For the following day, I booked a tour of the Connemara region of Ireland that included a trip to Kylemore Abbey. Connemara is a region in the westernmost part of Ireland known for its scenic beauty and preservation of Irish indigenous culture. It is also where the movie “The Quiet Man” was filmed. As the bus drove us through Connemara, I couldn’t believe it was a real place. The enormous mountains and majestic lakes made it feel more like a fairy tale than reality. Adding to my disbelief in Connemara was our visit to Kylemore Abbey, a one-time family mansion now home to a cloister of nuns. This imposing Victorian castle in the wilderness was build in the late 1800s by a man named Mitchell Henry as a gift to his wife (all the makings of a fairy tale, right?) and became renowned all over the world for its grandiose. I asked out loud, for about the millionth time since I’ve been in Ireland “How is this place real?”

On Sunday, I wanted to do a little more exploring in Galway with my friend so I took her to the Galway Cathedral before heading over to the Salthill Promenade. This is a walk along the Galway Bay that is incredibly scenic and leads to the Galway Aquarium, which we also ended up paying a visit to. After that, we came home and baked a pie, which is one of many habits I’ve picked up here, and my friend boarded a bus to make the long trip back to the Dublin airport. Many people would say that our weekend was full of typical tourist behavior and that taking in multiple nature sites was repetitive and unnecessary, but I think it was really important for me to have a weekend like this. In the past few weeks, things have gotten so hectic with assignments, trips outside of the country and making arrangements for the spring semester back at GW that the spark in my relationship with Galway really did seem to go out. Everything had started to seem ordinary and routine and I had stopped appreciating it in the electrifying way that I had in the beginning. Showing someone my favorite things in Galway, the things that I am going to miss the most, made me realize just how well I’ve gotten to know this place. Seeing someone from home also made me see all the changes that I’ve gone through since I’ve been here. I feel like some people might find me utterly unrecognizable when I go home, which is both scary and exciting. Hosting a visitor in Galway was just what I needed to realize how amazing this experience is and how lucky I am to have met so many amazing people and have the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen so accessible to me. I am truly living the dream.