Rainy crowded Galwegian streets

 Today, Thursday, my last day in Galway, I walked around a lot, ducking into stores late afternoon when it started pouring (and with wind). A lot of the streets are pedestrian only which I love, of course. 

I went to the Galway City Museum which was free and quite big. It had a display about the Aran Islands, one about the history of the Gaels (so apt since that is what I am understanding I am rather than Scottish or Irish), a history of the 1916 Easter Uprising (and how Galway was involved) and an exhibit about changing climates. At that point I was too tired and hungry and walked through the environmental one looking for the exit!

Clay art by Katherine West, from Scotland living in Galway, inspired by the Aran Islands and the amazing forts. These are thought to date from the late Bronze age (1100BC) through to the Iron age (300BC-500AD).

Aran sweater from 1960s

The Gaels got in the way of colonization just as the Irish have stubbornly done for the past couple of centuries 

I think someone back in Seattle thought I might stay in a thatched cottage like in this photo from 1902.

Like peat (turf), thatched roofs are a dying art but are still being done.

I ate lunch in a cute restaurant right next to the Spanish arch. The server was from Rhode Island. I shared a table with an Irish woman who was in town to bring her husband to get surgery (through private insurance).

I walked and took more photos. More poetry! Sculpture! Religious stuff and swans!

And I finally found the exhibit of the Cartooning Festival! It had cartoons about James Joyce and Ulysses which I'm afraid some of them were lost on me. The accompanying cartoons at the nearby public library were in Irish (but were translated with varying success). 

He says: Psst, wanna buy some turf?

Friday rush hour, rain and wind, long wait for a bus so I took a taxi and the driver asked me my favorite book after learning I had been a librarian. His favorite was some violent adventure/thriller. At least he reads!