Galway
Ireland
A small city that plays music every night of the week, on the edge of the wildest coast in Ireland
Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash
Photos by Chan Hyuk Moon, Tommy Bond, Wallace Bentt and Daniel Zbroja on Unsplash
Best time to visit all of Ireland
May to September, and July for the arts festival — it rains in all of them
Climate month by month
The next sixteen daysOpen-Meteo
Average high and low · °C
Rainfall · mm per month
Best months to visit This month · wettest 130mm in Jan
Where it is
53.27°N, 9.05°W Open in Google Maps
Things to do
A week easily- Find a pub with a session and stay for it, rather than going to three
- Drive the Sky Road at Clifden in Connemara
- Take the ferry to Inis Mór and hire a bike
- See the Cliffs of Moher early or late, away from the coach hours
- Eat oysters in September, when they have a festival for it
Galway travel tipsthe general rules
Currency budget Ireland
ExpensiveEuro country, and cards work everywhere including the pubs. Ireland is expensive, and a pint in Galway will still be less than in Dublin.
ATMs & cards
AIB, Bank of Ireland and Permanent TSB machines are free. The independent ones in shops charge and say so. Refuse the conversion.
Avoid these
- the independent machines in shops, which charge
Use these instead
- AIB
- Bank of Ireland
- Permanent TSB
Bank machines are free. Refuse the conversion offer, as everywhere in the euro zone.
Wherever you are: if the machine offers to charge you in your home currency, decline. That is dynamic currency conversion and the rate is set by the ATM's operator, not your bank.
Safety all of Ireland
Very safeSafe and very sociable. The pubs are the point and the centre gets crowded and drunk at weekends without much trouble in it. The Atlantic coast is what to respect: the Cliffs of Moher have unfenced sections and people have died taking photographs at the edge, and the Burren rock is slippery and full of holes. Weather changes fast on the west coast.
Where to walk, and where to pay attention (9 areas)
Comfortable, including after dark
Worth more attention
- the canal and dock edges late at night — unfenced water beside the route home from the pubs, which is the city’s standing warning
- the Prom at Salthill in a westerly — waves come over the wall and people are taken off it
- the Cliffs of Moher near the edge — the ground is undercut and the fence is set back for a reason
- driving the Connemara roads — single track, unmarked and with sheep on them
A student city that drinks and is overwhelmingly good-natured about it. The hazard here is water..
Our own assessment, not a sourced index.
Entry & visa Ireland visa rules
No visa needed
Freedom of movement, and no time limit. Ireland is not in Schengen, so there is a passport check on arrival even from an EU country.
Other passports
No visa neededup to 90 days
Ireland is outside Schengen, so days here do not count against a Schengen 90-in-180 allowance — which makes it a useful place to spend a fortnight mid-trip.
No visa needed
The Common Travel Area predates both countries’ EU membership and survived Brexit: British citizens can live and work here without any permission at all.
Visa required in advance
Entry rules change often and depend on your passport, not where you live — the official page above is the authority, and the airline checks before you board.
Health & emergencies all of Ireland
Good and affordableRequired to enter
No vaccinations are required for entry from Europe or North America.
Jabs worth having, and what happens if you need a doctor
Worth having
- Tetanus up to date
Getting treated
Good, and free at the point of use in an emergency for EU and UK visitors. Non-emergency GP visits are paid and cost €50–70. Waiting times in public emergency departments are long and well documented.
Nothing to plan around. The weather is what catches people: hypothermia on coastal walks in what looked like a mild day, and the Cliffs of Moher in wind.
Orientation, not medical advice — entry rules change and what you need depends on your own history. Check with a travel clinic four to six weeks before you go.
Food tip
Very goodGalway Bay oysters, with a festival for them in September. Seafood chowder in any pub worth the name, brown soda bread with it, and Connemara lamb. The city has an unusually good food market on Saturdays behind St Nicholas’ church.
Nightlife
Live music in pubs, every night, without a cover charge and without anybody making a production of it.
- the Latin Quarter — Quay Street and Shop Street, and most of the sessions
- Tigh Neachtain — the one everybody names, and it earns it
- Dominick Street — the west bank, and where locals drink
- Salthill — pubs with the bay in front of them
Closing: Pubs to 23:30 midweek, 00:30 at weekends; late bars to 02:00. The music starts around nine.
A beer in a bar: €6–7
Race Week in late July fills every bed in the county and doubles the price of the ones left.
Getting around
Workable- UberWorks here
- BoltWorks here
- FREE NOWWorks here
FREE NOW taxis only; Ireland licenses no private hire · Uber also taxis only, same cars
- Against a taxi
- Identical, because they are the same metered taxis. The app saves the wait, not the fare.
Every fare is on the national taxi meter, so no app can undercut another.
Time zone and your working day
Europe/Dublin — 5 hours ahead of you
3 hours of overlap with a 09:00–17:00 day where you are — 09:00–12:00 your time, 14:00–17:00 theirs.
No overlap with a 09:00–17:00 day where you are. Working from here means one of you keeps odd hours — their day starts at 04:00 on your clock.
office hours both at once night
Their 09:00–17:00 is 04:00–12:00 on yours.
The difference from the UK, Europe, the US and ten more
Worked out against America/New York, which is where this request looks like it came from.
Internet speedall of Ireland
Why these are Ireland's numbers and not Galway's
Home broadband — Fast. Several people on calls at once, large uploads, 4K. Broadband here runs at 1.6× the global median of 130 Mbps.
Mobile data — Fair. Maps, calls and streaming; tethering a laptop works for an hour, not a day. Mobile runs at 73% of the global median of 109 Mbps.
Ookla publishes no separate figure for Galway, so these are medians for all of Ireland. Cities usually beat the national number and remote islands and national parks fall well below it — treat this as the country's shape, not as a measurement of the street you will be staying on.
A median is the middle of every connection tested there, old copper and new fibre together — so in a country part-way through laying fibre it sits well below what a fibre line actually delivers, and a rental on one can run several times this number. Half of the connections are slower; a fibre flat is rarely one of them. It says what a place can do, not what your rental does, so every listing on Holistay carries its own measured speed and the date it was tested.
Getting online: Airalo or Holafly — a data eSIM for Ireland, installed before you fly and working the moment you land.
Source: Ookla Speedtest Global Index · measured June 2026
Must-see
Nearby day trips
Say a few words
Irish English, and a little Irish
- HelloDia duitDEE-a gwitch
- Thank youGo raibh maith agatguh rev mah AG-ut
- Cheers / good healthSláinteSLAWN-cha
- WelcomeFáilteFAWL-cha
5 more phrases
- How are you?How's the craic?hows the crack
- Fun, good timesThe craicthe crack
- GrandGrandmeans fine, and is the answer to almost anything
- Your roundYour shoutand it will be noticed if it is not
- GoodbyeSlánslawn
English is the working language everywhere. Irish is a living first language in the Gaeltacht areas of the west and is on every road sign in the country. A word or two of it is heard as a courtesy rather than a performance.
Religion
Roman Catholic, in a country that has changed fast
Still nominally around 70% Catholic and with a fraction of that attending. The church’s authority collapsed within a generation, and the referendums of 2015 and 2018 are the shorthand for it. The buildings are worth visiting; the assumptions are out of date.
Do's and don'ts
Do
- Buy your round, and buy it in turn — this is the one social rule that genuinely matters
- Take the conversation; a stranger talking to you in a pub is being friendly, not strange
- Let a pint of stout settle for the two minutes it takes
- Say thanks to the bus driver as you get off, which everybody does
Don't
- Do not skip your round, which is remembered
- Do not call it England, or the British Isles, or ask which part of Britain it is
- Do not order an Irish car bomb, which is a name Americans invented and nobody here finds funny
- Do not talk over live music in a pub session, which is a performance rather than a background
Where to stay in Galway
No Holistay rentals in Galway yet — the platform is just opening up. Every listing here will have a video tour and the option to negotiate the nightly price directly with the host.
In the meantime, here is Galway on the sites that do have the inventory — each search is already filled in:
- Booking.com hotels, guesthouses and apartments — the widest coverage almost everywhere
- Airbnb whole homes and apartments, and the better option for a week or more
How to get there
Fly into Shannon SNN
1hfrom the airport· 64 km as the crow flies
1h by road, or the airport coach.
Also worth pricing: Dublin DUB — 2h30 by rail or coach, and the main gateway.
Google Flights · Rome2Rio for the trains, buses and ferries as well as the flights
