Swuite Galway

For the price, I’d stay again. I’d been wary because it was one of the cheapest options, but the room turned out to be great and very clean, with plenty of towels and bedding. It had a bedroom area with a bed, desk, and TV, plus a little kitchen with a fridge, microwave, and hob, and a bathroom with a decent shower and toilet. It’s about a 20-minute walk into town, but supermarkets are nearby and there’s a bus stop across the road. The walls are a bit thin, and some drilling apparently had to happen at 8am on Saturday.

Fine for a night, though the bed was quite small. It’s a good 20-minute walk into town. The staff were lovely, let us arrive early, and brought a fan when we asked.

I’ve visited the long-abandoned monasteries of Franciscan monks in Ireland, known for their austerity, but I didn’t expect to stay in a modern version while in Galway. The room is stark white, with no decoration, colour, or apparent effort, and there’s a huge bird dropping smeared across the window. It looks caked on and old, so I shut the blinds. The TV sits to the right of the bed, as if they assumed I sleep on my side. The floors and baseboards show plenty of use, and the shower grout ranges from white to almost black. There’s a pool table in the lobby, and that one looks brand new.

The hotel is clean, and its small kitchen has what you need to make a meal. But the claimed 10-minute walk from downtown is misleading. After walking that long, you aren’t even halfway there. Galway’s pedestrian area, the actual town centre, is almost 2 km away and takes at least 20 minutes to reach.