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At the best of times I have an uncertain sense of direction. In a medieval city like Galway, the random splay of streets completely overwhelms what little skill I can bring to bear to the task. That nice café I had my tea and granola in yesterday—vanished. It was three blocks from where I’m staying, but it mysteriously picked up and walked completely off the map. A systemic search fails to reveal where that internet café that I’d passed a half dozen times now resides. By roundabout wanders I can surprise myself by finding Charlie Byrnes Bookshop again, and by radiating out from this landmark I can stumble across the rest of my basic needs. This modest mastery is the culmination of a week’s worth of navigating, mind you.

Galway, as much as anywhere, probably more than Dublin, reveals the New Ireland. Thirty years ago it had a defeated, derelict city core. Today it is the fast growing city in Europe. It shares some of that contemporary urban feel that makes everywhere in the world resemble the same shopping mall. But the shops are local, not chains, and even if an inordinate number of them cater to crafts for the tourist trade, there’s a vitality and vigour to the streets now. Long established pubs lay adjacent to health food stores and wine bars. A body piercing studio sits two doors from the Catholic Church. There’s an increasing residential development in the core, which helps keep the streets alive at all hours, and a largely sensitive rehabilitation of old buildings. Many of the streets of the inner core are pedestrian-only and, unlike Eugene, Oregon, which tried and failed at the same experiment, there’s a critical mass of services to make the scheme work.

Early in the morning the Guinness truck is making a noisy delivery of its load of kegs. A milk truck is across the street—the basics of life. At my café, which has reappeared, thank you, the staff is American (help wanted signs are on half the storefronts.) An old Irish man sits smoking and reading the Irish Independent. I sit at my laptop rewriting the introduction to my book—this is as much a writing trip as a photography one—and delight in the atmosphere and my tea.

4 April 2000

Galway