Begin your tour at the Spanish Arch, where wine and goods arrived from Spain and France into medieval Galway. Take in the Atlantic light hitting the water in a way that stops people mid-sentence.
From there, move through the Latin Quarter, down Kirwan's Lane, and past St Nicholas' Church, the oldest in Galway, and one of the strangest, expanded so many times by so many powerful families that it ended up with three rooflines and no apology for any of them.
Continue through Shop Street at full tilt and into Eyre Square, where JFK received the Freedom of the City in the summer of 1963 and the whole of Galway came out to meet him.
After an hour of exploring streets that feel like they were built for people, not traffic, and hearing stories that didn't make it into the guidebooks, head to Darcy's Bar.
Go together into the same small local pub that hasn't been built for tourists. There's a GAA match on the screen. Not as decoration, because there's always a GAA match on in an Irish pub and this one is no different. If you don't know what GAA is yet, you're about to. If you do, you already know what kind of place this is.
You take the glass. You pour it yourself, slowly, the way it's meant to be done. You wait for it to settle. You top it up. The whole group does it together.
Then someone takes a Polaroid.
An hour ago you didn't know these people. Now you're in a real local pub in Galway with a GAA match on the screen and a pint you made yourself in your hand. That's the moment. That's what you take home.
