Short break: Galway

GALWAY, IRELAND A European Capital of Culture 2020, diverse Galway and its surrounding countryside offers Gaelic culture and hospitality, says whenever you plan to visit

With a diverse Gaelic culture and tasty local food, Ireland’s Galway certainly deserves its new European Capital of Culture 2020 status

Walking with me through Galway city’s Eyre Square, my guide Liam Silke made a beeline for the John F Kennedy memorial. The stone plinth with a bronze bas-relief of the US president marks the spot from which he addressed a star-struck crowd in June 1963.

“I was there!” cried Liam (he is also the town crier). “It was the moment when people of Irish descent all over the world saw that coming home to visit was an option. TV was a new thing and watching the most famous Irish-american return to his roots had a big effect on the diaspora.”

Since then the harbour town on Ireland’s far western edge, where the rushing River Corrib sweeps into Galway Bay, has swelled to a city closing in on 100,000 people. Many incomers are of Irish heritage, but they have also been joined by large numbers of Spanish and other Europeans, a sizeable Brazilian community, and students from India and Malaysia.

The new Galwegians add spice to this welcoming and walkable city brimming with brightly painted shops varying from traditional to cool and kitsch. Great hospitality plays first fiddle in old-fashioned cafés, pubs and wonderful seafood restaurants, cheek by jowl with curry houses and the odd tapas bar. After dark, jig music wafts from countless cosy watering holes.

Martin Symington,

This diversity was key in the successful bid to be European Capital of Culture 2020 (along with Rijeka in Croatia), which runs until the end of January 2021. Landscape, language and migration are the themes under a slogan of ‘Let the magic in’. This applies to the region as well as the city with about half of the proposed events – musical, artistic and theatrical – due to happen in rural County Galway [at press time, the events’ future was under consideration; check

galway2020.ie for latest info]

Traditional Irish culture remains strong throughout the region. Galway’s Gaeltacht – the area where Irish Gaelic is the main language – is the largest and most populated of its kind in Ireland.

ASK A LOCAL

“There is a story to tell behind every nook, every cranny in Galway. Our history is long, deep and touched by the worst and the best of times. It is the latter we are enjoying this year with Galway welcoming the world as European Capital of Culture”

Liam Silke,

Tour guide

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THINGS TO DO IN COUNTY GALWAY

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