As wonderful as Galway City is, sometimes you want to explore other places in the surrounding area. I would recommend taking a walk to Salthill when you get the urge to go on a little adventure. Salthill is a small town about a mile and half east of Galway City. Salthill is located right on Galway Bay, so you smell the saltiness from the ocean when you’re walking through it. The town has a promenade (similar to a boardwalk) that runs the whole length of Salthill and provides a great view of the bay and the mountains in the distance. The promenade is about three miles long, so it makes for a great walk on a clear day.
Salthill has other things to offer besides the promenade, like the Galway Aquarium. The aquarium is a great place to visit and it only costs 10 euros for students making it a great rainy day activity to do with your friends. The aquarium is two stories and has a diverse selection of marine life. If you visit the aquarium at the right time you may be able to join the touch pool tour where you will get to hold crabs, starfish, and sea cucumbers as well as touch koi and other tropical fish. Another site to visit in Salthill is O’Connor’s Famous Pub. This is one of the locations that Ed Sheeran’s music video for his song “Galway Girl” was shot at. Besides being the site of a famous music video, O’Connor’s is special because it is totally different than any other pub I went to in Galway. This pub has some wild décor. The ceiling is full of fishing nets and seashells, there is a wall of old lamps, a corner for old road signs, random taxidermy, strange lighting, etc. But the weird décor of O’Connor’s creates a very welcoming atmosphere. It is so different than any pub in Galway City which is why I highly recommend visiting it if you are ever in Salthill. Another thing that Salthill is famous for is its diving board located at the end of the promenade. The diving board is approximately 25-30 feet high and leads directly into the waves of Galway Bay. Some people jump off the diving board for fun, but it is common among international NUIG students to jump off the diving board before leaving Ireland. I am not a fan of heights or plunging into freezing cold water, so I passed on this tradition, but I know a few girls who did jump off the diving board before returning home and they said that they were glad they had a chance to do it, but they were never so cold in their lives. Salthill is definitely a hidden gem in County Galway, and it is somewhere you must visit during your semester at NUIG. I have included a few pictures below so you can get a sense of what Salthill is really like the pictures include: the promenade, the aquarium, the diving board, and O’Connor’s.
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