Although I’m no Saoirse Ruane, I truly felt I was part of Ed Sheeran’s music video as we traveled to Galway and explored the city. Before finding ourselves in the middle of the city, we first stopped at the Cliffs of Moher which were absolutely gorgeous. It was quite interesting to see the diversity of Ireland as we traveled from the city to the countryside in a matter of hours. Seeing and experiencing tourism is quite fascinating in Ireland. When I was a tourist, it usually wasn’t in an English speaking country, so you felt less powerful and quite honestly stupid when trying to communicate. Here it feels different to be a tourist from the United States, I feel almost like I can assimilate and blend in quicker, feeling less “stupid” when I speak to people. You also don’t realize when you’re on a bus with 20 other people that they are from many other countries where English is not their native language. To them, it must be really hard to navigate and learn about all the major sites like the Cliffs of Moher because everything is in either English or Irish. Moreover, I feel more safe when I can find more American tourists like myself navigating the sites; I have been able to run into many here in the popular places around Dublin and Galway.
Because there is such a diversity of tourists here, it really seems to help Ireland as a whole come back from their recent yet historical bankruptcy. This boom of tourism from all over is great to help the people and the business running here. This helps the economy to generate at a better level than it has in the past. During the pandemic, I think Ireland really suffered because it seems tourism helps a lot in their economy as it does everywhere. Now that everything is slowly starting to die down, I feel tourism one again is growing and gradually improving the economy.
Exploring the city of Galway we actually spotted the pub that Ed Sheeran used in his music video. With that I knew I had to take a picture to remember and channel my inner Galway girl personna for the rest of our days in Ireland.
