For this week’s blog I will be talking about what the public transportation was like in Galway and around Ireland. I found the bus to be the easiest and most efficient form of transportation in Galway. However, the bus did not start out as an easy form of transportation. I am from a small rural town in Pennsylvania and have never had to use public transportation by myself before so figuring out the bus system in Galway was a bit of a struggle. So, now that I understand the bus system I hope my tips can help anyone else who is traveling in Galway.
To start off, there are two main public bus companies that run locally in Galway and to surrounding towns, these companies are Bus Éireann and City Direct. I highly recommend using Bus Éireann because they offer many more routes than City Direct. Once you pick a bus company you should download the app “Real Time Ireland.” This app shows where each bus stop is located on a map, the times a bus will arrive at each stop to pick up, and all the stops located on each different bus route. This app is a great place to begin if you don’t have a clue where to go to get on the bus or where it will be taking you. Each bus route is identified by a different number beginning with 401. For NUIG students it is very common to take the 404 bus route. The 404 will pick up at the on-campus residences and take students directly into the city center. It also stops at Westside Shopping Center (a popular place for students to get groceries) and the Galway Cathedral. The bus stops are all marked on the road with a red “Bus Éireann” sign. These large signs make it hard to be standing at the wrong place to catch the bus. If you don’t have access to the Internet on your phone, there are bus timetables available on the Bus Éireann website that you can look at beforehand to know at which time your bus is coming. These timetables are also located at most bus stops. You can pay for the bus in two ways. One way being cash. If you are only visiting Galway for a short period of time then I recommend paying in cash. The bus fare is usually only 2 euro, maybe a little more depending on how far you’re going. Upon boarding the bus, the bus driver will tell you the cost of your ticket and you pay him or her before sitting down. The other way of paying for the bus is by purchasing a Leap card. Leap cards are purchased at the student union on the NUIG campus and cost 10 euro. Once you have your Leap card you can then load euros onto the card, so you don’t have to carry cash with you when boarding the bus. All you have to do is place your Leap card on the card reader near the bus driver’s station and s/he will deduct the proper amount from your card. The Leap card is tailored for students and allows you to get discounts at many local pharmacies and shops. The other way of getting around Galway is by taxi. Taxis are very common in Galway and it is not hard to find an open one when you need it. However, I would recommend taking the bus over a taxi when possible because taxis are much more expensive than the bus. To go to places outside of Galway, the bus is the most common form of transportation. There is a bus station located a block from Eyre Square and there you can catch a bus to almost any city or town in Ireland. Most bus companies allow individuals to book tickets online and at the door. P.S. – I apologize for my lack of pictures in this blog and most likely in upcoming blogs as well. Not living in Galway makes if difficult to find pictures that will best represent the content in my blog :(
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This week I would like to give you all a quick update on my life and my semester in Galway as well as provide a few ways to cope with stress. To start off, I am no longer in Galway. I have returned home to Pennsylvania because this was the safest option considering that the coronavirus situation is constantly changing. The moving home process began when I was woken up at 1am on Thursday by a phone call from my mom. She was panicked because President Trump had just issued a travel ban which seemed as though it included the UK and Ireland, so she wanted me to book a flight home immediately. Looking back, with a little more clarification from the government and less panic from my family I could have avoided booking a last minute flight because the ban did not include the UK and Ireland, but of course that’s not the way things happened. Anyway, very early Thursday morning I booked a flight home for Friday morning at 9:40 am. This meant that I barely had one day to pack up my whole life, say goodbye to friends and Galway, email all my professors about my upcoming absences, and move out of my accommodation. If that isn’t overwhelming I don’t know what is. Getting back to sleep after booking my flight was difficult because I was feeling extremely stressed. A few ways I like to deal with stress are by walking away/taking a break from the thing that is causing my stress and by talking to friends about my stress. So, at 2:30 am this is exactly what I did. I turned on my favorite Netflix show and started texting all my friends from Galway who were going through the same situation as I was. It was very helpful to talk to people who understood my situation. My friends were able to offer me advice and I was able to help them make decisions about leaving Galway and going home as well. I eventually got to sleep but had to wake up early the next morning to start packing up my belongings. Packing all my clothes, shoes, souvenirs, etc. took considerably longer than I had anticipated which unfortunately left me less time to enjoy Galway one last time with my friends. That night we went to dinner at a restaurant called McSwiggan’s. Having dinner with my friends was a huge stress reliever because we were able to share our thoughts and feelings about leaving Galway and what it would be like to finish classes from home (my friends and I at dinner pictured below). After saying goodbye to my friends, I headed home to hopefully get some sleep before I left to catch my bus to the airport at 2:45am. Traveling alone was something that was new to me as well. I had never been through the airport alone because I was lucky enough to fly to Ireland with a friend from SU. I had some anxiety about navigating the airport at such an uncertain and crazy time to travel, but I knew that I could do it. I got lost and confused a time or two throughout my journey, but I always found someone who worked at the airport and they were very willing to help me find my way. I landed in Philadelphia Friday at 1:30pm and headed home from there. I am currently in a self-quarantine/social distancing position because you can be a carrier for coronavirus and not show any symptoms. Currently on day six of my self-quarantine and I haven’t gone crazy yet 😉. I am just working on some assignments and final essays for my NUIG classes. Galway was a wonderful place to study abroad and I will miss it dearly, but I am happy to be home now because I know it was the right/safe decision to make.
Before going abroad, I had it in my head that I would have so much more free time than I typically have during a normal semester at Susquehanna. I definitely have more free time abroad, but I didn’t think I would have to use my time management skills in Ireland as much as I currently do.
Time management is something that I consider myself to be very good at. During my SU semesters I always have a daily routine that includes homework time, class time, meal time, and me time. My semester at NUIG has changed what my daily routine looks like drastically. I am in class for significantly less hours per day at NUIG than at SU. This reduced my allotted “class time” in my daily routine. I also spend much less time doing homework at NUIG because my course load is much lighter. Class and homework time used to take up about 70% of my day, but at NUIG they only take up about 40%. This means that I have more time to focus on myself during my semester abroad. Now just because I have more time to myself doesn’t mean that I spend it doing nothing. Taking care of yourself properly takes considerably more time abroad than it would at home. Cooking and grocery shopping eats up a large portion of my free time at NUIG. These are two things that I would have never budgeted time for in my day at Susquehanna. You also have to remember to take care of your health when abroad. This means getting regular exercise, making doctors appointments when feeling ill, and acquiring the appropriate medicine if you become ill. These may seem like simple tasks but there is a lot more to scheduling doctors appointments and getting treated when abroad. At home its easy to pick up the phone and make a doctors appointment because you’ve probably had the same doctor for years, same health insurance, and your medications most likely get sent to the same pharmacy every time you need one. However, when you are abroad it is important to remember that it is going to take more time to do these simple tasks. If you need to see a doctor it is your responsibility to find one on your own that is willing to work with your insurance from home or the temporary insurance you have while abroad. You have to get yourself to this appointment and to the pharmacy if needed. Theses are all things that you should budget time for or research in advance. It’s important to remember that while hopefully you have people at home supporting you, those people are thousands of miles away and it your responsibility, and yours alone, to take care of you. My advice would be to budget your free time carefully. Make sure you are eating properly, staying healthy, both physically and mentally. Make sure you are attending classes and doing your assignments because it is easy to forget that you’re still a student when abroad. It may take a couple weeks to find the right balance of work time and free time, but once you do you’ll be sure to have a happy and successful semester. This past weekend I signed up to go on a hike to the Connemara region of Ireland. However, the hike was cancelled because the mountain was too muddy to walk up. My friends and I had been looking forward to the hike and refused to sit inside the rest of the day just because our plans were ruined. We decided to walk to Menlo Castle which can be seen across the river from the path that runs by the NUIG sports fields, but to walk there you have to go around the river about four miles.
So, we started our journey and ended up walking on very narrow, very country roads. In our four mile journey there were about three cars that passed us on the road. The hike was uphill, so we were able to see the terrain and landscape of Galway. From the NUIG campus and even Galway city one would assume that the entire area is quite flat; there aren’t many hills in the city or its suburbs. However, when we reached the top of the hill in Menlo we were able to see over the city, campus, and beyond. At this point I realized that there are large mountains and valleys very close to the university. I could also see lakes and ponds that I never knew were there before. It was really interesting to see all of the geographical features that I didn’t know the Galway area had. It is crazy to think that I have been here for two months and have never noticed them before. (I didn’t get any pictures from the hill because it was pouring rain…as always 😉). We finally reached the road that led to Menlo Castle, but there was a gate and a private property sign standing in our way. None of us knew what to do. Luckily a local man came by and we asked him how to get to the castle. He directed us down the path that had the private property sign posted and he told us to pick some garlic on the way? Well this was something new to me. I’d never been anywhere were there was wild garlic to pick. Another unexpected aspect of the Irish landscape. My friends and I attempted to pick the garlic, but the bulbs were too big to pull out by hand and none of us had any other way of getting them out. Oh, well. We continued down the path and came to a clearing where we finally saw Menlo castle…300 yards away. Defeated, we trudged back down the path again and were back where we started. We now saw the correct path to get to the castle but there were about 20 cows blocking the way. Mud pits and leafy trees one minute and an open field of cows the next…this is truly the Irish landscape. At this point there was no stopping us from getting to that castle, so we slowly inched our way towards the random cows, and they did not care about us one little bit. Once past the cows we were at Menlo Castle. I then realized that the Irish landscape had surprised me once again by hiding away a grand castle in the middle of a cow pasture…wild stuff. The castle ruins were very neat to explore (see my pictures below). I guess the moral of this blog post is to always take advantage of your host location because even by walking a mile or so up the road you can learn so much more about your city and it’s history/landscape. |
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