I majored in Lodge Restaurant Administration in college, which is a fancy way of saying I\u2019m professionally qualified to judge your complimentary mint on the pillow. I love all hotels, from the ones where the towels are so fluffy you could get lost in them, to the ones where the “continental breakfast” is a vending machine that may or may not accept your currency.<\/p>\n
But in Ireland, my heart (and stomach) belong to the B&B. Forget a sterile key card; here, you\u2019re likely to be welcomed by a lovely human who says, \u201cAh, you\u2019ve arrived! Let\u2019s get you a cuppa and possibly a medicinal whiskey to help with the jet lag.\u201d (The jet lag is from the flight, but the whiskey is for, well, just because it\u2019s Tuesday).<\/p>\n
The true glory of the Irish B&B, however, isn\u2019t the d\u00e9cor (which usually features more doilies than a grandmother\u2019s sewing circle). It\u2019s the breakfast. The Full Irish. This isn’t a meal; it\u2019s a cardiovascular challenge on a plate. It\u2019s a glorious, greasy platter of fried eggs, rashers (which is like Canadian bacon if Canadian bacon spent all its time at the gym lifting weights), sausages, grilled tomatoes, baked beans, and Irish soda bread toast. It\u2019s the kind of breakfast that sticks to your ribs so effectively, you won\u2019t need lunch until approximately next Thursday.<\/p>\n
Galway is lousy with these wonderful B&Bs! Finding the right one for you depends on your budget, your travel companions, and whether you prefer your morning view to be of a bustling city street or a sleepy sheep. My job is to wade through the sea of doilies and find you the perfect spot. A few of my top picks:<\/p>\n
Corrib House:<\/strong>\u00a0Right in the heart of the action, so you can roll out of bed and directly into a pub. Strategically brilliant.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n St. Jude\u2019s Lodge:<\/strong>\u00a0A classic B&B where the staff is so nice you\u2019ll wonder if you\u2019ve been secretly adopted by an Irish family.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Sea Breeze Lodge:<\/strong>\u00a0A bit of a walk from the city center, but the view of Galway Bay is so stunning it basically counts as your daily cardio. Your camera will thank you; your feet might complain.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Yes, you will eat potatoes in Ireland. You will eat them boiled, fried, mashed, and possibly in your dessert. But to think Irish food stops there is like thinking a Tesla is just a fancy golf cart. Galway\u2019s food scene is a Michelin-starred, pub-grubbed, tapas-fueled paradise.<\/p>\n My number one piece of advice? Eat anything that recently swam in the ocean. Galway is perched on the bay, so the seafood is so fresh the fish probably know the daily specials.<\/p>\n You can spend a fortune on a multi-course masterpiece or spend your fortune on pints and find a life-changing bag of chips (that\u2019s fries, you heathen) from a takeaway shop. The options are endless.<\/p>\n A quick story: Years ago, I was leading a student trip where one of our travelers got sick. After a truly Oscar-worthy performance of stress (me, not the student), we finally got to Galway, everyone was okay, and it was my husband Greg\u2019s birthday. We needed a win. We needed a meal that didn\u2019t come from a hospital vending machine.<\/p>\n We chose\u00a0Oscar\u2019s Seafood Bistro<\/strong>\u00a0and it was a religious experience. The scallops were so good I considered writing them a thank-you note. The wine was so perfect we almost cried. It was the kind of meal that makes you forget you ever spent the day convincing a foreign healthcare system that yes, this\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0a real insurance card.<\/p>\n We loved it so much, we broke our sacred travel rule: “Thou shalt not dine at the same place twice.” The next year, we went back. And it was\u00a0still<\/em>\u00a0incredible. That, my friends, is the highest praise I can give.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I majored in Lodge Restaurant Administration in college, which is a fancy way of saying I\u2019m professionally qualified to judge your complimentary mint on the pillow. I love all hotels, from the ones where the towels are so fluffy you could get lost in them, to the ones where the “continental breakfast” is a vending […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"http:\/\/static1.squarespace.com\/static\/57c9edba2994ca8c81a1a8f1\/57cc53039f7456813a24fb4b\/5f84a9730893fb70c442e4a5\/1753210651920\/galway-ireland.jpg?format=1500w","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[2624,248,334,200,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-52141","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-europe-travel","8":"tag-galway","9":"tag-great","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-reasons","12":"tag-visit"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoptraveler.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoptraveler.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoptraveler.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoptraveler.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoptraveler.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hoptraveler.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoptraveler.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoptraveler.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoptraveler.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoptraveler.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}3) Galway: Where Spuds Go to Get Fancy<\/h3>\n