Two nights in Galway

The Chaos Demon takes on a new town

“You’ll leave without your secrets.”

That’s what the old woman sitting next to me at Heuston Station warned me about Galway. She then proceeded to tell me all of her own, as people do at train stations and airport bars. I have no secrets worth keeping and was travelling solo for the first time in ages, so the prospect of going somewhere chatty enough to draw the ire of a woman from Cork was exciting.

I had some free time and the inclination towards adventure so I booked myself a cheeky midweeky in Galway in an effort to hit my monthly Irish adventure quota. What ensued was a dose of chaos with a diverse cast of characters.

I arrived on a Wednesday afternoon and pushed my small suitcase up the hill from Eyre Square. The sound of suitcase wheels on ridged sidewalks and paving stones is right up there alongside extractor fans for sounds that I believe should be punishable by prison time, so I felt particularly conspicuous as I entered the Dean. The Dean is a flash hotel I had no business booking for myself aside from that this felt somewhat celebratory in the wake of the closing of my old life in Toronto. I no longer owned a house, and I felt the need to make the occasion in some small overpriced way.

My room had terracotta walls, a wall of treats from local vendors available for a small fortune, and a turntable with Sinéad O’Conner ready to roll. The terracotta colour reminded me of the time I painted my home office an orange that Pinterest would’ve been proud of, but that made my face look radioactive on Zoom calls and could not be maintained. I focused instead on Sinéad and the azure tiles in the bathroom with the overhead rain shower. It was altogether too nice for me; the sort of room that should be shared by a couple clinking wine glasses and having a silly dance party before tumbling into bed. You can understand why I had to get out.