Day 5: June 9th
This was a free day in Galway City, so I started early, since I had a lot that I wanted to see. I ran into Dr. K in the hotel dining room, so over breakfast, we discussed my paper and which conference I should submit it to. Then I headed out without a map to discover what Galway had for me; I will admit that I knew generally where I wanted to go, but not quite how to get there. One of the many things I discovered on this trip was how to trust my intuition and let go of having to be in charge. I just followed the sporadic signs indicating the general direction of a given landmark and managed to find everything I was looking for.
My first stop was Galway Cathedral, pictured above. As I entered the church, a Mass just happened to be starting in one of the side chapels, so I went. It was the feast of St. Columba, one of Ireland's three patron saints. He was one of the great missionaries of the early Irish church, as well as a scribe. Tradition has it that he got into a fight with St. Finian over which man had the right to keep a copy of a psalter that Columba had made. After a large battle in which many lives were lost, the high king passed a now-famous sentence on the copy of the book in question: "To every cow her calf; to every book its copy." Columba then became a missionary in an effort to save as many people as had died during his feud with Finian. After Mass, I wandered around the church, taking pictures, but most of them turned out really blurry.
Next, I went to the Anglican Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas, which houses a Crusader's grave from 1280. The tomb is fairly simple, with an inscription around the base in Norman French requesting that the reader pray for the soul of the man buried there. Other highlights of the church included a Celtic cross that serves as a memorial for parishioners who died during the Great War and a banner with the city seal and the banners of the 14 tribes of Galway who came over with Strongbow, the Norman knight. My Nana's family, the Martins, belong to one of the 14 tribes.
The Martin family crest is the bottom left; a cross with a sun and moon on a blue background
After St. Nicholas, I went around the corner to the Nora Barnacle house, which was the residence of the author James Joyce's wife for about 8 years during her adolescence (and which I forgot to get a picture of). As I walked up to the tiny house, an older lady was just unlocking the door. Her name was Anne and she's worked at the house since it opened in the 80s, talking to visitors about Nora and James' relationship, James' works, and (I think) just about anything else anyone would care to know. I spent a delightful hour and a half talking to her about everything under the sun; she was thrilled that someone from SC would take the time to visit the little house. The house next door had just been bought by an Irish expat who had grown up in Australia and he and his father were doing renovation work; they kept taking breaks to come over and visit with us. Anne was very excited to find out that I have Galway cousins and she told me all about the medical work that she and her husband had done in Uganda in the 60s. All in all, it was a wonderful visit.
The Spanish Arch, c. 1584
When I left the Nora Barnacle house, I went down to the waterfront to find the Spanish arch from 1584, then, feeling like I was going to burst with excitement about my morning, found a coffee shop in the Latin Quarter in which to journal. It took an hour and a whole pot of tea to get everything down on paper, but I didn't have to worry about forgetting any of the details. While I was heading back in the direction of the hotel, I ran into Drew and Charles, who were on the street waiting for the girls to get done shopping. They'd been waiting a long time and finally decided they'd been abandoned, so the three of us went adventuring. I took them back to the Cathedral, then they took me to a restaurant they'd found the night before, which had an indoor waterwheel. We had a pint, then headed back to the hotel, where I proceeded to sleep like the dead for two hours.
The boys outside the Cathedral
That night, we decided to get pizza and bring it back to the hotel to save some money. Nobody really wanted to go out, though, so I volunteered to go get it and Shannon, Gretchen and Gillian went with me. The only place that was open (it was about 7) was a Dominos, which I was reluctant to go into, but I ended up being glad I did. I ordered the pizzas and the girl asked me for a name. I gave her my last name automatically, since that's what my dad always does, and she repeated it as a question. I confirmed the name and then spelled it for her and she gave me the total. I paid, then waited there while the other girls ran to the Centra for drinks. While I was waiting, I did the math with the menu and realized that she'd given me a 15 Euro discount on our food. The only reason I could come up with was that it was because of my last name, which is a Galway name. Whatever her reason was, we certainly appreciated our cheap pizza! It was quite a packed free day, but I thoroughly enjoyed my exploration of my ancestral city
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