There are some songs that, for some unknown reason, make me smile every time I hear them. “Vienna” is one, though the song doesn’t remind me of Austria, but New York. Another is “Galway Girl,” but, again, the song doesn’t remind me of Galway–I’ve only just been to the city for the first time in my life.
Though I was looking forward to it immensely–I even got giddy when I heard a street performer play it in Cork, which I took to be a good sign of things to come–Galway, for all its charm, fell short of my expectations. In the end, I think it all boiled down to time: with so much to see, our plans were fairly ambitious, so by the time we reached Galway, tired and ill, it was hard to muster up the energy to do anything aside from wander.
And wander, we did. From the streets of the city to the port to a small park we found, we got to know Galway by foot. I geeked out over signs in Irish–more than any other destination on our trip, Galway’s citizens spoke the other official language of the country on a daily basis–and the CYF found a shamrock necklace as a keepsake. We came across some swans that seemed sweet until one attacked a small boy, who will never believe his mother again when she says, “They can’t get out from behind that fence.”
When all is said and done, Galway is a lovely city. I can see why people fall in love with it. Still, there was something lacking in this stop that makes me want to reserve that song–“Galway Girl,”–for some other city… maybe one I haven’t yet visited.
