In my several days in Galway, I've done quite a bit of wandering...and quite a bit of getting lost. Today and yesterday were perfect good/bad foils of what can come of my sudden desires to see a bit of the countryside, take the scenic route, or just not cross the street awkwardly where someone else is waiting.
So Ireland is rainy. I've mentioned that before here, and it's generally considered common knowledge. Yesterday, my first and only class finished around 5pm in the Engineering Building. (A note on that: it was fantastic, 'Celtic Languages in the Modern World', I had Harty-flashbacks but in a good way, it was a small class with under 20 students, only a handful of which were Irish, the rest Erasmus or American, and the professor was Swedish. The building also decides when to open the windows if it thinks we're too warm- we weren't.) But after quick use of the free-wifi after class to check if the bank was still open (it wasn't), I began the wet trek back to the rest of campus about 5 minutes away. I found that all right, but by this point in the day it was properly raining, a first in a city that had seemed more or less perpetually gray and drizzly. Also, Irish people don't really wear rainboots, so I was trying to fit in and wasn't either, and my umbrella had blown inside out. And I was wearing an about 80-year-old thin raincoat. It did it's job, but just wasn't built for the cold.
And then somewhere between the city hall and my apartment, which google maps tells me is a 10 minute walk but I think is around 4, I took a very, very long-cut. As in I didn't get back until around 7:30. For the better part of my journey, I wasn't terribly upset about my predicament. I had nowhere to be that night, I enjoyed exploring and- after a bit of walking, stumbled upon a shopping center I'd been to the previous day's walking tour, which included the cheapest supermarket in town! So I gleefully stocked up on all of the essentials: quiche, chicken curry WeightWatchers meal (what?), a block of cheese, cookies, canned pineapple, strawberry jam, and what I hope is Alfredo sauce. I actually didn't realize how ridiculous that sounds until I wrote about it here. Moving on.
Since we'd been in this area on tour, even though it was a ways away from where I wanted to be, I was fairly certain I could find my own way home and decided not to ask the check-out guy who had been fumbling with my American debit card for directions. Wrong wrong wrong. Apparently we had backtracked on the tour, but I plowed ahead, eventually trekking uphill along a highway getting sprayed by cars bouncing into puddles before I realized I was heading the very wrong way. So, cursing under my breath in my best Irish accent, I turned around, planning to just go all the way back to school and start over if I had to, while also trying to decide what food in my backpack (they don't give you plastic bags at the checkout here) I could eat if I was forced to camp out in a remote Irish cave for the night (keep in mind I was still very much in a city). I decided it would be the block of cheese.
But it never came to that, and I did discover the right uphill pathway to the city center just on the other side of the supermarket, and could have cried with joy when I saw the glowing red lights of TK Maxx. Eyre Square was minutes away, and from there, a surefire route to my bed and kitchen. (I did briefly enter the store in search of a warm raincoat- it's like TJ Maxx, only, you know, 'K', but was unsuccessful in finding anything under 60 euro.)
Now while yesterday's misadventure was sort of unpleasant while I was living it, I was extraordinarily proud when I finally keyed back into the building and ate my quiche. And today, after an international-students welcome session I showed up to when it was halfway over and another class I had profound difficulties in finding, I took another different route home, but this one had much better results. For one thing, it was sunny today, all day- a first. I walked down past the Galway Museum, which is free and I'll definitely be visiting soon, and was rewarded with a breathtaking view of the bay, docks, and little houses on the other side. It was sunset, so I sat down on the edge (no railings, sorry Dad- but there's little floaty life-saving rings every 100 feet or so) and took in the view. Because of the rain, there was lush thick grass everywhere. I saw some grizzled old men swapping tales by their boat (or I imagined them to be doing so), and even though my camera was out of batteries, the view was one I'll remember for a long time. If yesterday's walk seemed like hell, today's was heaven.
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