Experiences in Galway

So it has been a little while since I have posted here yet. I have been Ireland for over a week now, and have been loving every day of it so far.

The main thing this post will be about is Galway, a beautiful and old town, full of old buildings and a ton of history every step of the way. I first went to Galway last Tuesday, over a week ago, on a trip with the rest of the group. 

We had a walking tour through the old town in Galway, starting at the Hall of the Red Earl. We visited that, the oldest church in Galway, shown below, stopped outside of the King's Head, which is now a bar shown above, and finally ended up in the mall that is in the old part of the town to see the old city walls and fortifications that are preserved and part of the mall still today. 

It was very weird to see all of these things, and hear about all of the history, and then just across the walkway there is a Subway, or McDonald's even. It is also very strange to me that you see some of these old buildings, and then right next to them a more modern building, obviously built in the space between two older buildings. It is fairly disconcerting to me to see this, the old and the new side by side, because I haven't ever experienced it before.

The same can easily be said of the picture above. This is the oldest church in Galway, the Church of St. Nicholas. (Yes, one and the same, Santa Claus!) What I caught above is the space between two of the three peaks at the front of the church. It is weird to me that you can see a divide in the stone they used, the upper left is quite different from the lower right. This is because the church was added on to at multiple times by different wealthy families in Galway at the time, and they wanted to kind of show off to the rest of the city, so they added on an entire other section to the church. 

When I think about if I have seen anything like this in America, I personally cannot think of that many examples. It may have to do with how little I have traveled in America itself, or it could even be that the buildings in America are all much younger than this church, but I cannot think there would be too many places that we would add on to a building like this, rather than tear it down and build anew. It is really cool to see this, and to see that they did this multiple times over the many years that this church has been standing. 

I really loved walking around the old parts of Galway, and seeing buildings older than America that are being used as a bank, or a pub, or something so modern as that. It makes me want to explore other, even older parts of the world and see if there are changes such as this as well.

I am looking forward even more to exploring the rest of Ireland, and seeing all that there will be to see. There is a lot more to talk about, but that will come in future posts!