Galway

Over the Shannon River – a swath of glass, as if one of the multitudes of Irish country fairies had painted a slather of liquid mirror through the fuzzy green fields – and through the woods, to Galway station we did go, dumping our bags at the Left Luggage desk and stumbling into the city morning, finding breakfast (what a surprise: bacon, sausage, eggs, beans and pudding) at the Left Bank Cafe with a crowd of smalltown businessmen and spattered painters. Found our way to a recommended B&B, but once the duck-like old woman discovered that Naomi and I weren't married, she wouldn't let us the room. It's a Catholic nation, by God.

I liked Galway City right off. It reminded me of the first little towns that snared Däv and I on my first European jaunt (exactly 10 years ago), ancient medieval cities with labyrinth street planning, spruced up, filled with shops and pubs and cafes and a wild assortment of cheery people. The residents, the visitors (a host of Europeans, most of whom we found out come each year out of habit) all bristle with an energy we never quite tapped in Dublin. Galway had a vibrancy, a hedonism, a free spirit that was immediately evident. Like most cities I've loved in my life, Galway is just big enough to hold a teeming culture – clubs, good record and book shops, hip cafes, an intriguing list of gigs even during the week. It's also a city on a much more human scale, despite the rabid development reshaping the character of even the city center. Dublin was walkable but still had its army of taxis; a cab would be an absurd luxury in Galway, even in a squall.

The next morning in Galway, though – after a day and night wasted to weariness, a leg injury (God, I'm out of shape) and a moldly B&B – I hailed a cab to take me to my hotel. Naomi was moving on to the Aran islands (she would get stuck there for the remainder of the trip because of both weather and the cancellation of ferries amid the foot-and-mouth panic, returning to New York three days late), and I wanted to stay in Galway. I moved to the Garvey Hotel, above Garvey's pub on a corner of Eyre Square – which was half-heartedly renamed Kennedy Park after JFK's visit in the summer of '63. Clean bedroom with amenities, a corner view of the city square, a well-stocked pub downstairs (when I checked in, there was a tremendous racket of thumps and thuds downstairs – loading in the Guinness kegs ... for an hour) – what more could a traveller desire?

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A classic Irish character: At breakfast at our first B&B, we joined another guest, a farmer from County Mayo named John. He had apparently been in the hospital – for what he never said, and I thought it too impolite to inquire – and wasn't released until late the previous afternoon, so he decided to stay the night. His brogue fluttered from his moustache like green crepe paper on an air-conditioning vent. He owns 28 acres with just a few cattle, and he's not worried about foot-and-mouth. He loves Mayo, though, "where people are people," and rhapsodized about its beauty at great length. (Indeed, my travel guide says, "Often seen as simply the passage between scenic Galway and literary Yeats country, Mayo is little visited – though it's hard to see why.") He asked about our family roots, said he's met a lot of Americans who've been coming back to Ireland recently to trace their heritage. "Me, I know every one of my grandparents and great-grandparents," he said proudly. He had a definite plan for his physical recovery, too: badmitton. "A fine game. Keeps me fit when the fields are fallow."

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From my travel journal, Wednesday, March 14:

Rocks roll in waves

Shore do.

End of the road, the Long Walk along the inlet (aptly named, yes), across the soccer field to the sea wall, Galway Bay. Flat, blue, and a whiff of low tide. Cool breeze, bright sun squeezing in ahead of the front inching over the hills. My back to the city, back to the clouds, back to everything ill-defined and gloomy. Meditated here in in the salt air, me and the chick to my right, legs drawn up, leaning against the bunched grass, staring holes in the bay. To my left, an elderly woman, stern smile despite all odds, scarf on her head, sitting ram-rod straight on a bench, hands laid in her lap, staring bigger holes in the bay. I'm on the wall. (What else is new?) Is this the end of the road? I hear Mike Scott asking: "What do you want me to do, Lord? I'm listening..." Sounds: exhaling wind, twitter of gulls, skitter of a border collie on the path, child's laughter. There are answers here.

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Rainy afternoon in a tiny restaurant, the Latin Quarter on Quay Street at Wolf Tone Bridge, minestrone to die for a bacon with brie on a spongy, crisp bread I've never encountered and will be the lesser if I never encounter it again. Moved next door to the Cafe du Journal (the best cafes in Ireland all run by disaffected French folk, go figure), a smoky, boho shotgun place lined with old books and unvarnished wood where I would wile away the next few afternoons sipping superb lattes and eating the occasional chocolate-banana crepe. Women slumping in chairs with bunches of daffodils, smoking Marlboros and talking on cell phones. Students from the University College Galway (which holds the dubious distinction of having conferred an honorary degree upon Ronald Reagan) rolling cigarettes and reading D.H. Lawrence. Rain, rain, rain outside and who cares?

My cabbie yesterday drove us past one of the high schools where a picket line lolled about on the sidewalk. Secondary teachers in Ireland have been on strike for about six months, demanding better pay after years of going without. Sitting next to me at Cafe du Journal was one of the striking teachers, Kevin, a 60-ish man in a white collar so starched you could strike a match on it. He and an acquaintance at the next table began talking, bitching about the strike and specifically about the prime minister's announcement that morning that he'd step in to affect legislation allowing U2 to circumvent stringent public-event laws and add a second date to their sold-out summer show at Slane Castle; Kevin's beef: "He'll court the youth vote by coddling a rock band, but he won't step in to negotiate with the teachers? It's a bloody insult." James, his acquaintance was not at all optimistic, not as much as Kevin. "I still think it will be solved," Kevin said. "Yes, but to what extent of betrayal?" James asked. Kevin gave me the skinny on the strike: teachers pay in Ireland has fallen behind (about 10,000 pounds behind) other professionals of comparable experience, and the teachers never complained throughout the recession when salaries stagnated but they were given more programs and hours to manage. Now that the economy is booming, they decided it was time to ask for their share, and the government, Kevin said, "has been spoiled by a cheap educational system – they won't even negotiate with us." They don't strike every day, only on national and regional strike days, though the major concern in the headlines is over who will proctor the end-of-year exams (it may be the police, the "garda"). Kevin concluded: "You believe in karma? All those years of horrific teachers in the parochial schools, those sadistic masters Joyce wrote about – we're paying for that here."

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Pints that evening in Garvey's. A fellow next to me sported blazing red hair. I turned about, caught a glimpse of him and started – Daniel? He noticed my instant of arrest and raised his eyebrows in a friendly but wary acknowledgment. "Sorry," I said, "you hair, you looked like someone I know many miles from here." Ouch, homesick. We got to talking – about red hair, even. "Red hair is seen as this trademark Irish thing," he said, "which is total bollocks. The Vikings were the redheads. But it became an Irish thing. Most places invaded by other cultures are merely colonized, ruled from afar, affected but not entirely altered. The people who invaded Ireland got stuck here. Ireland is a big orgy of Vikings, Spanish, French and British criminals, people who came here and got stuck."

Dinner at McDonagh's Seafood Bar, back on Quay Street. Galway's a fishing town, might as well enjoy some seafood. Ordered crab legs. Now, I've had crab a thousand different ways, but I've never cracked the claws myself. Wasn't sure what to think when the waitress brought me tools. She was very patient; it took me about an hour to get through a dozen, but my God it was worth it. Crab is such sweet meat, and these were as tender and soft as angel food cake. Five fellows came in declaring loudly that they were after "simple pub grub, fish and chips"; in from Portumna for the weekend. An older man, balding, grey, kind face (named Seb?), noticed my brave struggle with the crustacean and showed me a trick – how to crack the claw right at the junction of the pinchers, moving them just so the shell snaps one way and the meat ejects in one fell scoop the other.

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The River Corrib is a fantastic torrent. Tumbling down from Lough Corrib, the lake that divides County Galway between the fertile fields of the east and the wild terrain of the Connemara in the west, the river is in a damn hurry to reach the bay, rushing through Galway City's channels with impressive might and speed. Is it like this year-round, or is Lough Corrib that bloated with winter rain? In the fall, salmon runs upstream here, fighting the old black water that keeps on rolling out to the bay, past swans nibbling their feathers in the inlet pools, past teens making out on the Long Walk.

Upriver is the city's cathedral, the deliciously named Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed Into Heaven and St. Nicholas, which was only commissioned about 30 years ago. It's splendidly awful inside and out, a true architectural disaster, though its green copper dome bestows the skyline with a bit of grandeur. Across the Salmon Weir Bridge and into Shop Street a ways is Lynch's Castle, a sturdy, fine medieval house in the center of town notable for its contribution to the language – this is where the term "lynching" comes from. Now occupied by the Allied Irish Bank, it was once the home of the Lynchs, Galways most prominent family for more than 300 years. The local story is that in 1493, the mayor, James Lynch Fitzstephen, found his own son guilty of the jealous murder of a Spanish visitor. The boy was incredibly popular in town, so much so that no one would take on the job of hanging him. Desperate to execute the letter of the law, James executed his own son, hanging him from the balcony of the house. Legend says he never again left the house.

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I regret to confess that whilst in Ireland I developed a serious addition to crack.

Actually, it's spelled craic, and it's the Gaelic term for the quasi-impromptu gatherings of traditional session musicians at local pubs. The craic is the nebulous combination of music, drink and conversation that produces evenings of fun you'll remember for a lifetime. I certainly won't forget a couple of nights on craic in Galway City, drinking, laughing, singing, all with the belly, all in the clumsy arms of total strangers.

Well, almost total strangers. One particularly raucous night out was enjoyed with another fellow, Cynthia; she'd returned to Galway to hook up with me for a southern leg of exploration toward the weekend. She also had her violin along and han't played it yet. After a fantastic Italian meal one night, we stumbled up Shop Street in search of an opportunity for her to break out the strings, and we found it at Tigh Coili, as traditional an Irish pub as ever you'll find. In the corner, crammed around a hopeless little bar table marked "Music Table," were six or seven musicians – guitar, tin whistle, traditional drum, a couple of violins, and eventually a big-boned fella with bagpipes – coolly jamming through a set of standards, from "Inch by Inch" to, um, "Let It Be." By the time they played my favorite traditional song, "Wild Mountain Thyme," I'd had a few pints and I wept as I sang along. Cynthia rosined up her bow and followed along as best she could, having never played Irish music before. (She was worried because she didn't know any Irish songs. The piper's advice to her: "These aren't songs. They're tunes.") A blond software engineer named Frankie and his New Zealand flatmate bought me pints and became my new best friends for the evening, the three of us singing along like frat-party idiots. It was a hillbilly hootenanny of the finest order, one of many we would enjoy on the west coast.