Ramble
Quest - Galway and the Burren
After a full, rainy day of hiking, hitching, and busing, I only get as far as Enis, which is an underrated town, in so far as I found it at least as interesting as Irish towns that get far more tourist attention. The hostel there is closed though, and a deluge forces me into the extremely bad (freezing cold, no hot water, noisy) Queen's Hotel. I guess I can feel better about staying in crummy hostels now that I know that the over-priced hotels are almost as bad.
I hitch over to Galway the next day, with two more days of nearly constant freezing rain. I watch the last "Lord of the Rings" movie during a dull, wet New Year's. I wound up leaving Galway at this point, but came through again two more times, first returning south to the Burren, and then north to Connemara and Cong, each time coming back into Galway and spending at least a night. So, I wound up seeing it thoroughly and not always in a pouring rain.
Galway is without a doubt one of Ireland's favorite cities. By which I mean that whenever I got into discussions with locals about places to visit in their homeland, Galway was one of the most recommended cities. Curiously, I noted that it didn't rank quite so high with the recommendations I received during chats with fellow travelers. I clearly fall into the traveler's category on this issue. Galway isn't a bad place, mind you, but it simply isn't all that interesting either. Frankly, I can't understand why so many of the Irish rave about it. I guess it does have some nice pubs.
To be very honest, (and forgive me if I've mentioned this already) none of the Irish cities are particularly outstanding from a tourist's perspective. The countryside and coastline are without a doubt Ireland's best features. There is a tinge of uniform blandness to the cities here.
True, I had some bad experiences in Galway. I've already related my problems with O'Neachtain Tours. Similarly, I had a terrible time with one of the hostels there called: Sleepzone. After I spending one night out of a two night stay, I returned to my dorm room to find all of my stuff missing. Asking at the desk, I learned that they pulled it all out because they said I was mistakingly checked into a room they wanted to close off. My stuff was strewn in piles in their luggage room.
Except that not all of it was! Several items were missing, including my sleep sheet and one of my best shirts, and of course it's not like I have many spares. The really troubling thing is that Sleepzone was so cavalier about the episode. At first they promised to track down the missing goods, but when they ultimately failed to do so, they were completely unapologetic and offered no form of compensation. If you've read much of my previous journals you already know that I don't really mind missing the stuff, but the attitude here was extremely inhospitable, so I mention the incident as a warning to others.
As I said, my first excursion out from Galway was back south, towards the Burren region. I bussed to the attractive little village of Kinvara and hiked passed ugly new housing to relatively remote Doorus House, an extremely peaceful hostel that isn't far from a quiet beach. I spend three enjoyable nights here, hitching off during the day to hike around the famous Cliffs of Moher or on the strange limestone solitude of the Burren. All of the hiking is great, and aside from one bad hitching day where everyone passes me by in the rain, I have a fabulous time.