Setting the Scene (Part 2): Galway, Ireland

So yesterday I briefed you about my location here in Salthill, Galway.  Today I will dive a bit deeper into my living situation and then I promise, I'll get to all of the lovely things to do out here in Galway.  Because there are PLENTY of great things to do besides sit at home at my house :)

My roommates are… well… different.  Don't get me wrong, these boys are so nice and completely harmless, but I'm in a whole different world.  I saw an ad in my Nat Geo Traveler (thanks for sending that daddy!) for Texas that said "Texas, it's like a whole 'nother country." Ya.  I kinda feel like that, but times 100. I found this apartment on gumtree.ie which is like a smaller version of craigslist for Ireland.  They don’t even have a site for Galway, but I found this listing while I was looking in Cork.  I’m subletting my room from Our attached house - I have the top two left windowsa guy who is studying yoga in India for a couple months.  I got to spend some limited time with the previous occupier of my room when I arrived and he was nice enough.  There are 5 bedrooms in the house and I share them with 4 insanely… well… insane boys.

Mr. G, as we’ll call him, initially was the most outgoing and nicest roommate.  He facebook friended me before I moved in, made an effort to get to know me.  It was refreshing. He is about as opposite of me as humanely possible.  We agree on nothing except the strangeness of our friendship. Mr. G downloads everything he finds on the internet in case it “goes away” someday and stores it in harddrives in his room.  He watches conspiracy theory documentaries, stopped drinking a brand of smoothie because Cocacola bought 10% share (something about large corporation corruption), yells at me for forgetting to turn my space heater off (for wasting energy) and finds the fact that I like shooting guns appalling. He makes me coffee every morning, we argue talk for hours, and I really like him.  In addition, I know for a fact that he will read this, and he will laugh and we’ll laugh and then he’ll make fun of me and it will be over.  It’s great.

Roommate #2 is Mr. Activism. Mr. Activism has more energy than a windup doll.  He kind of reminds me of a train that’s heading up a hill… It’s like he keeps going against the grain, pushing and pushing and losing momentum and it looks like he might just collapse and fall back down the hill, but he hits the top and then goes barreling down the other side at lightning speed.  Mr. Activism once camped outside a Shell facility north of here for SIX MONTHS to protest off-shore drilling. SIX. MONTHS.  This shitz for real. He has WILD red hair and is tall and lanky.  He’s actually from Florida originally but he’s lived here for 5 or 6 years. The kid is bat-shit crazy.  To the t.  Mr. Activism and I got off on a great foot and have spent some great nights chatting.  He taught me how to chop wood also, which rocks. 

Roommate #3 is Jesus – and named so ONLY because he looks just like him.  No seriously… he looks so much like Jesus that he actually gets CAST as Jesus in advertising campaigns.  He showed me a photo of him in an ad where he played Jesus in the last supper painting. He also plays an extra in pretty much every single Irish/Scottish/British war movie ever.  I saw pictures of him dressed in costume from King Arthur the other day; sword and all. Anyway, Jesus has 5 children and three baby-mommas in two countries. He’s in his 40’s and still lives in 1965 – looks, ideals, lack of responsibility.  He’s from California and is trying to go back, but they won’t let him back in the states because he has 18 YEARS of outstanding child support. EIGHTEEN YEARS. Aka an entire human’s childlife. Jesus and I agree on nothing (I guess I’m the anomaly in this house) but we also don’t agree on disagreeing. 

Quirky Joe has lived in the room next to mine since I’ve lived here, but he just moved out.  Quirky Joe was quiet and nice.  He’s a music teacher and had lessons here occasionally, but other than that, I rarely bumped into him.  He has a son, who is fantastic.  He established quickly that I was clearly the coolest person in the house and has enlisted me to help him write a letter to his girlfriend (he’s 6).  He is in love and bought her flowers AND chocolate for Valentine’s day.  This kid’s got the right idea. 

Andrea just moved in a couple of days ago and replaced Quirky Joe + Kid.  Andrea is so sweet, from Switzerland, and such a nice presence in the house.  Her boyfriend lives in Galway and she moved up here to be with him for a bit and see how things go.  She has been such a good girl ally and is so easy to live with.  I don’t know her that well yet but know she’s going to be a great addition to the house.

So that’s my living situation.  We’re a mess. But we’re starting to be a rather well functioning family.  None of the boys have jobs, so we are home all day together.   There is always someone to talk to, someone to help you start a fire in the fireplace or someone to take a walk down to the beach with.  Mr. G is getting his phD and therefore is not broke nor hopeless.  Mr. Activism and Jesus however, are pretty much all over the place.  They don’t buy much of anything.  Rent is not easy to come by and it’s been a real eye opening experience to live with them having never come from a situation where I really didn’t have enough money to get food, or pay rent.  We talk about things most people never get around to and the emotion around here is really raw. 

by rrogers_vfxMr. Activism and Jesus dumpster dive to get food.  Now, before you judge. Ok no… go ahead. So basically, for whatever reason, the laws for expiring food in Ireland are strange.  Grocery stores basically throw anything away a few days before it expires.  Also anything that has been damaged gets tossed.  So the boys take their big backpacks every couple of days and head to the really nice grocery store in town and get food.  And the shit they come home with is incredible.  They will come home with gallons and gallons of milk, juice, cartons of eggs.  They’ll bring home tightly sealed containers with fruit, chopped veggies, cheese, even steaks.  And everything they get is still sealed in the package.  It’s amazing.  I doubt everything is this clean in the states, but I am just amazed by what they’ll come back with. Last night they went to a grocery store much like whole foods and picked me up a whole bunch of makeup still in the packages and a couple of pairs of gloves – which considering the fact I’m not 100% warmed up to actually eating food out of a dumpster, was a really sweet gesture.

All of the boys are a part of this thing called a Social Space which is basically like a community center but with no charity or second agenda behind it.  It’s kind of like a free place to come and share and hang out and it’s all a sort of like free expression and anarchism and whatever.  The space is currently being moved to a new building so I don’t actually get to see it in action.  However, we are housing much of the furniture and junk from the space at our house right now, while they’re in lingo.  So our house looks about as organized as our personalities do.

Hopefully this gives you a decent idea of what kind of crazy canvas I’m working with right now.

Setting the Scene: Galway, Ireland

Galway is such a lovely city.  I feel so at home here and have been so grateful to have all of the experiences I’ve had since I’ve been here. 

That being said.  I am COMPLETELY in another world.  This town is so different from the few cities I’ve visited on the East Coast of Ireland.  I honestly sometimes doubt that I’m in the same country.

South Park, Galway, IrelandGalway City is a small 70,000 person city in Galway County which is on the far West coast of Ireland straight across from Dublin (about 2.5 hours in the car).  Irish is the language here and most people speak it to some extent.  Most of the street signs are in both Irish and English and many restaurants, coffee shops and pubs are Irish exclusively.  Meaning signs, language, menus are all exclusively in Irish.  At the risk of sounding like a complete retard, I honestly had no idea Irish was still this much alive. 

I remember sitting on a bus in Dublin when I was there a couple of years ago and noticing some old women speaking the language.  I laughed and wondered what remote part of the country they were from.  Now – I know.

Galway is also known as a hippie city.  It’s got an incredibly laid back vibe.  Everyone walks or bikes everywhere.  There are street musicians at every turn playing everything from the Pipes to a giant African drum.  Everyone seems to know everyone; it’s difficult even for me to walk down the street without seeing someone I know or have at least seen/met before. Galway’s also a huge university town with two large universities within city limits so there are hoards of young people – which is great.

I live in Salthill, which is a My street in Salthill, Galway, Irelandsuburb of Galway City.  It’s known as the sort of beachy-vacation home area of Galway.  I live up on this hill with a park next to me.  My bedroom is on the second story and looks out over Galway Bay.  I can see the Cliffs of Moher, the Aran Islands and the beach from my bed.  It’s amazing. Salthill has its own set of shops, stores, restaurants and pubs; so it’s easy to stay really close to home and not miss a thing.  It’s about a 20 minute walk for me down the beachfront “Prom” to city center or about a 5 minute bus ride.  Not too shabby.

The park next to my house always has people in it.  There are youth teams who hold soccer practice, people who come to throw a tennis ball for their dog and groups of teenagers lurking in the corners of the big walls that outline it smoking and drinking and well… being teenagers. It’s a really lovely green park and it’s perfect that it slopes up just in time to hit the deep blue water of Galway Bay. My window faces West towards the park and then ocean and every night I get to watch amazing sunsets off the ocean.  I really have it pretty good. 

Sunset on the ocean, from my bedroomI’ll get into my roommates more later, but our living situation is interesting.  I live with 4.5 boys (Arian is 6 so he’s only .5 a person).  They are all about as different from me as possible.  We disagree on mostly everything and sometimes I feel like I’m an exhibit in some crazy museum about conservative American rednecks. Our house is big though and quite wonderful.  All of our different backgrounds and opinions really add to  the uniqueness of this city, and I’m not sure I would trade any of it.

Dear Gabbey: How do I get a [cool/awesome] site like yours?

This week's question comes to us from Cassie but is a question I get QUITE frequently from other short-term and long-term travelers out there.  It also coincides with the launch of this new website as by launching this site, I got rid of all of the "over-the-counter" blogging tools I was previously using. 

Blogging is a great tool to let people know where you are and by nesthostelsvalenciwhat you're up to when you're traveling.  When I first started blogging, while backpacking Europe in 2007, my blog was the MAIN way that I kept in touch with my family and friends back home.  At one point, I went an entire month without talking to anyone back home except for my blog and e-mail. 

"But I'm not a blogger, and I'm DEFINITELY not as tech savvy (nor as irresistibly good-looking) as you, Abbey"

Well that's alright, humble readers.  Because fortunately for you, there are a plethora of blogging tools out there just BEGGING for you to use them.  Although I have custom built this site using my brain (90%) and a company called SquareSpace (10%), it was not an easy task and I do not recommend it for anyone who is not completely comfortable coding and building their own custom graphics. However, there is still a way to get a cool blog and not fork over $1000's of G's for a pimped out site (like my own).  In addition to paying me to make a site for you, here is a breakdown of my three favorite FREE "over-the-counter" blogging tools for travel blogging.

WordPress.com

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms out there, and it's easy to see why.  WordPress is VERY easy to set up and very easy to work (I'll insert here, as long as you don't want TOO much out of it).  WordPress also allows you to have instant access to a decent amount of built-in "themes" that can then be tweaked to fit your blog's own feel.  The biggest two strengths I see with WordPress are the extensive "widget" or add-on library and the user community.  WordPress is not going anywhere anytime soon.  The content management part of this site will only get better with time and the extensive user community help to answer almost any question out there.  In addition, because it's an open (and free) the user-developed add-on tools are fantastic, and really unrivaled.  You can add maps, polls, graphs, quizzes, about me pages, and much more with just a bit of techy knowledge (like... how to drag something and drop it somewhere else).  I realize not all of us were gifted with such technical ability (like my mother - Hi Mom), but fortunately, most of us were.  Stephanie, over at Twenty-Something Travel has a good example of a simple WordPress blog.  Also here's an article from Matador's Traveler's Notebook on the 20 Great WordPress Themes for Travel Bloggers.

Blogger.com

Blogger is, in my opinion, a more versatile platform than WordPress, but we all know that with more freedom, comes more ability to... well... eff things up.  I ran my blog http://blog.abbeygail.com/ on the Blogger platform for almost 3 years and it suited me very well.  Like WordPress, Blogger is free, easy to set up and easy to use (again... as long as you're not trying to do too much).  Blogger also has an extensive library of free "themes" which can be customized using their built in content management tools.  Blogger also gives you more flexibility if you do know how to tweak a bit of CSS stylesheets and backend html code.  Like WordPress, Blogger also gives you the ability to add custom widgets and has a very large network of users to help with support and idea swapping.  Because Blogger is a Google product, there is the potential for even more networking and development tools than WordPress and the Google Blogger dev team has a blog and a beta version of Blogger (that any one can use) that experiments with even more amounts of techy-ness. One of my favorite travel blogs using blogger can be found at A Travel Around the World.  You can also check out my old travel blog which I hosted on Blogger.

Offexploring.com

I save Off Exploring for last because they are my hands-down favorite pick for blogging platform for most people.  Off Exploring is SPECIFICALLY tailored to travelers.  It allows you to organize your posts by where you are, add photos, a map and videos. It also allows you to create a "Travel Plan" and display that to your readers so they know where you're headed and where you've been.  It's an easy platform, allows unlimited (small size) photo storage and as many blog posts as you like.  I used this as the blogging platform for my 2007 European Backpacking Trip and it NEVER let me down.  It's a simple enough site, so it uploads quickly (even when you're in those crappy hostel internet cafes on dialup) and it's just plain easy.  PLUS (yes, there's a "plus"), at the end of your trip, when you return home, they will even print up your ENTIRE journey, including pictures, posts and maps into a hardback book that you can then keep in print on your lovely coffee table into eternity. Amazing. Go ahead and check out my Travel Blog from 2007/08 - The Adventure Called & I Followed on Off Exploring. They've quoted my approx 140 page book published at about US$60. Not too bad, if you ask me.

The most important thing is to blog frequently and to try and capture what it is about your trip that interests you the most.  Do you want to know exactly what you ate for breakfast every day? Do you want to remember how you felt about that Italian boy you met down the street? Or would you rather just list out all the things you did see and show your pictures for you family to have proof that you're still alive?

What do you think; do you have any other great easy and free blogging platforms that you use?  Feel free to link to your own blogs in the comments section so we can see what your site looks like.

I'm A Chick with Baggage

Well, in case you’ve been under a rock (and/or not checking Twitter or Facebook or one of the other hundred thousand social networks I update on a near-hourly basis), you likely know that I am in Galway, Ireland and have been for a while.  You may also notice that I have a BRAND NEW and awesome website that I have been working diligently on for the past 2.5 weeks – hence no posting.  I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense that I couldn’t just sit down and peck out a couple updates a week on what I’ve been doing, but most of them would have just said “still working on my bloody website – spending all of my time in Ireland inside my effing room.” So I figured I’d spare you the agony.

Today, I’m not going to give you much either.  Instead!! Please take some time and poke around my new site and please give me feedback.  I’ve basically poured my entire cup of creative juice into this bad boy and so I need a couple days to chill out and do some marketing and see the countryside.

I’ve got some better organization for those of you newbies and some cool ways to sort through and search for content within my site.  So poke around a bit and send me an e-mail with any feedback at abbey @ achickwithbaggage.com

As a part of the new site, I’m also going to be featuring a Photo of the Week every Monday and answer one lucky reader’s question in a little column I’m calling “Dear Gabbey” on Tuesdays.  Yes, I do, in fact, realize that my name is not Gabbey.  It’s a nickname from college and rather than look up whether I’d be breaking any sort of laws by copying Dear Abby, I just decided to make my own.  So, if you’re interested in getting a question answered for this week’s Dear Gabbey (which is tomorrow, I now realize) please submit a question so I have something to answer.  Thanks!

Anyway, thanks for following, as usual, please forward on to anyone you think would be interested.  My new website information is as follows:

URL: http://www.achickwithbaggage.com/
Blog URL: http://www.achickwithbaggage.com/blog
RSS URL (unchanged): http://feeds.feedburner.com/iamabi

Thanks for everything and look forward to building some great content in my new hood!