Friday, June 23, 2023

This morning we catch a National Express coach to Stansted airport at the ugly time of 5:00 AM. I accept my fate and go without coffee for several hours, and, if I’m being honest, I think I do a pretty good job of not biting my mother’s head off, or the heads of any strangers. Stansted is bonkers. The queue for security backs all the way up into the ticket-scanning stalls and it takes us longer than anticipated to get through.

There are so many women traveling for hen parties. So many. Is this just hen party season in the UK? Are there just more people in one small space and so it seems like every other group of people I see is a group of women in ridiculous outfits surrounding one wearing a sash that reads “bride to be”? (Also, can we talk about how much I love that they’re called “hen parties” and “stag parties” here? Why did we have that as an option and instead choose “bachelorette” and “bachelor”? America. You always choose the lamest possible term.)

I’d forgotten what this airport was like. It might be more accurate to say that I blocked it out of my memory after I suffered through it while weathering a nasty summer cold en route to Barcelona. After security, there’s a kind of forced march through a brightly-lit capitalist hellscape of perfume, alcohol, souvenirs, and candy. Then you’re in the place with the food and the queues are slapdash at best because people are trying to (a) figure out which gate they have to go to, because this isn’t information they give you ahead of time like at other airports, and (b) there is a VERY narrow window of time between “please go to your gate” and “final call.” This latter point we discover just after I finally get my plain drip coffee and little treat sandwich at Pret, walk a whole mile and back to the bathroom, and then look at my phone, which urges me to go to the gate or else I will be stranded here in Stansted for all eternity.

Ahhh! We rush to gate 92, coffee spilling everywhere, expecting no one to be there and the doors to be closed, but it turns out we are far from the last ones. Is this just overzealous English punctuality at work again? Was it actually last call tho, Ryanair? Really? No matter. I have time to sip my alive juice while waiting in the queue for the bus, which takes us out onto the tarmac to our waiting aircraft.

Ryanair is a little hit or miss, but this flight is quite good. Smooth, fast, caffeinated. We land at the Shannon airport before I know it. The most exciting thing about the next ten minutes is that I get an actual stamp in my passport! I’d resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn’t get any stamps for this trip since everything at Heathrow was automated (lame). But it seems like all the Americans in this queue are getting stamps, while all the UK residents are just shuffled through. Alright! Being American for the win! This stamp is green, and it’s huge! It has the date clearly printed! It says Ireland and Shannon and tells me I can’t stay here for more than 90 days! Try me, Ireland… just kidding. (Or am I…)

Man, I’m so thrilled about this stamp situation. They don’t call me Passport for nothing. I positively skip through customs and out into the terminal, get tickets for the bus that leaves in five minutes for Galway, am unsuccessful in finding a water fountain, and accept my fate of one hour and fifty minutes without a full water bottle. Despite this, the drive is delightful. It’s a very comfy coach and I have to fight to stay awake because of the three hours of sleep I got last night. But when I am awake, I love what I see. Outside the window, the landscape is exactly what one would imagine when one thinks of Ireland. Green. A blanket of soft gray clouds in the sky. Sheep, cows, horses, more sheep. Little stone walls and rows of trees. Tiny towns with winding streets and stone buildings. I’ve been to England several times, but never Ireland, and mom and I have both wanted to go for years. We’re loving taking in these first few glimpses of the countryside.

When the bus finally reaches Galway, it’s a short walk from the station into the city center. We find ourselves on a busy main street full of people walking, people eating, people performing music. There are all sorts of little trinket shops and clothing shops; there is flag bunting strung up over the streets. It’s a loud, colorful, lively mashup that makes us excited to experience it.

We pull over for lunch at the pub Tigh Neachhtain. It’s incredibly cozy, with slightly off-kilter bookshelves and art on wooden walls, though we sit outside to eat because we’re avid people watchers, and this is a very good people watching spot. Mom and I share a delicious bowl of clam chowder, then she eats bout a ton of mussels and I have a salmon salad. Good god. It is divine. I can get down with this.

We’re even more worn out after that, so we continue walking down the street, across the bridge on the River Corrib, and into the west side and then Claddagh neighborhood—this is the place where that famous Irish image of the hands holding a heart with a crown originated; it bears the same name and is a symbol of friendship, love, and loyalty.

We check into our Airbnb, which is in the loft of a townhouse owned by a local, Ronnie. He greets us and gives us some ideas about where to go in the city, then asks how I like my coffee and says he’ll leave us some croissants in the morning. Then Mom and I have a little nap. I’m determined to see this town, though, so I’m awake within half an hour. Time to explore!

Mostly, we just pop into little shops for the rest of the afternoon. The first one is this adorable little shop called Wooden Heart. They have these little felt fairies that the shopkeeper tells us are handmade by a group of women in Romania. They create a new line of fairies based on the current season, so we’re in summer season now, and there are all sorts of summer themed friends, like one holding some wheat, one with a sunflower hat, a poppy, a strawberry. The strawbie fairy just hits me right. I think I’m going to name her Genevieve. (It was my mom’s suggestion, and also what most people who responded to the Instagram poll I posted seemed to think I should call her.)

We find a cute little shop with beautiful wool accessories. We’re in there for a minute and mom starts sneezing. Too much wool in one place? But the sheepies outside the shop are cute too. We try to get into St. Nicholas Church for a visit, but it seems to be closed for an event. We get a drink and snack at a cafe on of the side streets, then meander through the city a little more. Finally, we check to see where our bus leaves from tomorrow, and then go in search of dinner. After much thrashing around between options, we end up at Freddy’s, which is an excellent choice. We share some small plates: meatballs, bruschetta, salad. Obviously, we people-watch. There are some people dressed all the way up here, women in dresses that defy physics. It’s a small town, but it seems like there are parties here, too. Such energy!

We finish up dinner with a hot tea (for mom) and an americano (for me), dip into one more sweater shop before it closes, then visit the famous Spanish Arch, which is a 1584 extension of the 12th century Norman-built city walls. It used to house soldiers who manned the cannons and kept watch. There’s also an interesting light installation here called Línte na Farraige, or Line of the Sea. For this piece, the artists created a bright LED line 1.9 meters up on the wall to indicate where the sea level would be during a storm surge in about 80 years from now if climate change keeps progressing at its current rate. It would destroy Galway and most of its suburbs if such a storm happened at a higher sea level. It’s a simple but striking display, and you can see it from far across the river where it empties out into Galway Bay.

We cross the river and walk out on the other side so we can get some good views of the city. As we’re walking, Mom says out of nowhere, “I think that’s a grotto.” Thinking she’s talking about the little house-shaped yellow boxes mounted on poles that house life preservers, I reply, “I think that’s a life preserver.”

“No, not that,” she says. “It’s Mary. Look.”

Sure enough, there’s a huge grotto depicting the scene with Bernadette at the cave at Lourdes, with Mary appearing to her as a vision.

“Oh,” I say as we get closer. “Well, to be fair, there are some people in the world who might see Mary as a kind of life preserver?”

We start to walk farther out to the point into the bay, but it’s getting dark and our original plan was to go to the pub The Crane for a drink and to hear some live traditional Irish music. But we have to stop off at the airbnb first because we’re both freezing. When we get there and sit down, however, we know there’s no going back. We’ll try again tomorrow after we return from our big trip to the Aran Islands and the Cliffs of Moher!

It’s late again. Will I spend this entire trip sleep deprived? Stay tuned.