County Galway is really two holidays that share a name. There is the city, a compact medieval port you can cross on foot in twenty minutes, and there is Connemara, 3,000 square kilometres of bog, quartzite mountain and Atlantic coast starting an hour to the west. Booking every night in one and driving to the other is the most common way to waste a Galway trip.
This guide is about which town to sleep in, not which hotel to book. Once you have the base right, the rest sorts itself out.
How many bases do you actually need
- Two nights or fewer. Stay in the city. Take a coach tour west rather than moving your bags.
- Three to five nights. Two or three nights in the city, then two in Connemara. Clifden is 77 km from the city on the N59 and the road is slow, so day-tripping the whole peninsula from a city hotel means about three hours behind the wheel before you have seen anything.
- A week. City, one Connemara base, and if the weather looks settled, a night on Inishmore rather than a rushed day trip.
Galway city centre: the default, and usually the right answer
The old core is genuinely small. Eyre Square to the Spanish Arch is about ten minutes on foot, and the lanes in between (Shop Street, Quay Street, Kirwan’s Lane) hold the pubs, bookshops and buskers people come for. Galway City Museum beside the arch is free, the cathedral on Nun’s Island is free, and Charlie Byrne’s bookshop will absorb a wet hour without complaint.
Base here if it is your first visit, you are without a car, you want trad sessions and food within stumbling distance, or you are catching the Connemara and Cliffs of Moher day tours, which all pick up in the city.
The trade-offs. The centre is loud at night in the streets you most want to stay on, and Galway is the wettest corner of a wet country. Parking is the real cost: on-street bays are chargeable 8.30am to 6.30pm Monday to Saturday and 1pm to 6pm on Sunday, and the sensible move is the Port of Galway flat rate of about €15 for 24 hours or the €12 park-and-ride that includes the bus in and out. In July, when the Galway International Arts Festival and the Galway Races overlap, beds and parking both vanish and prices climb accordingly.
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Salthill: the same city, with the sea
Salthill is 3 km west along the bay and it is where Galway families actually spend their weekends. The prom runs out to the Blackrock diving tower, flat, paved and lined with benches, and everyone kicks the wall at the far end before turning back. Salthill and Grattan beaches are Blue Flag and lifeguarded from mid-May to September, Galway Atlantaquaria is the reliable wet-afternoon move with children, and Leisureland has a 25-metre pool.
Base here if you have children, you want a sea view, or you want to arrive by car and not fight the city for a parking space. There are two free car parks near the prom, and many hotels give free parking to guests who book direct.
The trade-offs. You are a 40-minute walk or a bus ride from the Latin Quarter, which matters more at 11pm than at 11am. Bus Éireann route 401 runs from Eyre Square and stops at Salthill Park. The eating along the Golden Half-Mile is good but it is pub and pizza territory rather than the city’s better kitchens, and out of season the strip is quiet.
If Salthill feels too built-up, the Gaeltacht villages west along the R336 are the quieter version of the same idea. Barna is 7 km out and has the Blue Flag beach at Silverstrand and a seafood reputation that outruns its size; An Spidéal is 18 km out, with a craft village of ten working studios and two south-facing beaches. Both need a car or the coast bus, and both put you on the road west rather than the road into town.
Oughterard: halfway to Connemara, and still on the bus route
Oughterard sits where the Owenriff River runs into Lough Corrib, 26 km north-west of the city on the N59. It is the chief angling centre on the lake, and fishing Corrib is free: you need a boat, hired through local guesthouses or the town’s angling centre, not a permit. The early-May mayfly hatch is the week the serious anglers arrive, and the town’s fishing festival lands alongside it.
Base here if you fish, you want a Connemara base you can reach without driving, or you want one bed for the whole trip. Citylink route 923 and Bus Éireann route 419 run between Galway and Oughterard roughly hourly to two-hourly and stop in the town centre, which makes this the only realistic no-car base outside the city and Salthill. Aughnanure Castle, a well-preserved 16th-century O’Flaherty tower house, is 3 km east, and the 200 km Western Way starts in the village.
The trade-offs. It is a lake town, not a coastal one, so the Atlantic beaches and the Sky Road are still an hour further west. Street parking around the square is free and so is the car park opposite Supermac’s, which tells you something about the scale of the place. Beds are mostly guesthouses, B&Bs and self-catering rather than hotels.
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Clifden: the practical base for Connemara
Clifden has fewer sights of its own than “the capital of Connemara” suggests, and that is exactly why it works as a base. About 1,250 people, the largest town in the region by some way, with the restaurants, pubs, ATMs and petrol you will not find further out.
Base here if you want to see Connemara properly and still eat well at night. The 16 km Sky Road loop climbs straight out of town above Clifden Bay. Diamond Hill in Connemara National Park is about 20 minutes away and free to walk. Kylemore Abbey is north on the N59, and the Derrygimlagh bog trail south of town takes in both the Marconi wireless station ruins and the spot where Alcock and Brown put their Vickers Vimy nose-first into the bog in 1919.
The trade-offs. You want a car. Citylink coaches run from Galway and Bus Éireann links north toward Westport, but no bus will get you to the Sky Road or Derrygimlagh. The town books out for the Clifden Arts Festival each September, the longest-running community arts festival in Ireland, which is either the reason to come or the week to avoid.
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Letterfrack and Leenane: for walkers who want the hill out the door
Letterfrack is a village of roughly 200 people at the foot of Diamond Hill, and the national park visitor centre is on its edge with free parking and free entry. The 442 m summit is the one Connemara peak you can walk to the top of on a graded trail in an afternoon, with the Twelve Bens and Ballinakill Bay opening out beneath you. Kylemore is five minutes up the road. It is worth knowing before you arrive that the tidy campus in the middle of the village was St Joseph’s Industrial School, whose record of abuse is one of the grimmest in the state’s history.
Leenane, 20 minutes further north, sits at the head of Killary, Ireland’s only fjord, hemmed in by the Maumturks and Mweelrea. The 90-minute fjord cruise runs from Nancy’s Point from March to October.
Base here if you are walking, and you would rather be at the trailhead at eight in the morning than driving to it.
The trade-offs. These are small villages with a handful of places to eat, and both are close to empty outside July and August, which some people book them for and others find bleak. Car essential. If the weather turns in for three days, there is nothing to do indoors, and in Connemara it will.
If Connemara is where you intend to spend most of the trip, our guide to where to stay in Connemara goes village by village, including Renvyle, Cleggan, Ballynahinch and an overnight on Inishbofin.
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Roundstone: the beach base
Laid out in the 1820s around a stone harbour that still lands lobster and crab, Roundstone is the prettiest village in Connemara and the one to pick if beaches are the point. Dog’s Bay and Gurteen sit a couple of kilometres west, twin white strands whose sand is crushed seashell rather than mineral, with turquoise water and Errisbeg hill behind.
Base here if you have children old enough to swim, or you want a working harbour village rather than a market town.
The trade-offs. Dog’s Bay has almost no parking and fills early in July and August, so staying in the village is genuinely an advantage. It is 77 km from the city and further from the national park than Letterfrack. The Roundstone Regatta week in July takes the village over.
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Kinvara and south Galway: for the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher
Kinvara is a village of about 720 people at the head of Galway Bay, with Dunguaire Castle on a rocky spit at the edge of the water and the grey terraces of the Burren across the bay. It is the southern gateway to that landscape, and it points you toward Clare rather than Connemara.
Base here if the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren are the main event and Galway city is a day out rather than the reason for the trip. Bus Éireann route 350 runs from the city roughly hourly, which makes Kinvara the second-best no-car option in the county after Salthill.
The trade-offs. You are on the wrong side of the city for Connemara. Dunguaire Castle itself was closed to visitors at the time of writing with no confirmed reopening, so do not plan the trip around it. The free car park by the promenade fills fast on Friday market days and summer weekends.
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A night on the Aran Islands
Most people do Inishmore as a day trip and spend half of it watching the clock. Staying over in Kilronan changes the island completely: the day boats leave in the late afternoon and you get Dún Aonghasa and the stone-wall country to yourself in the evening light.
Ferries run year-round to Kilronan from Rossaveal, 37 km and about an hour west of the city, with a 40-minute crossing, and from Doolin in Clare. Aran Island Ferries run a shuttle bus from Victoria Place on Merchants Road in the city, which you book with the ticket. Terminal parking at Rossaveal is paid, roughly €8 for 24 hours.
The trade-offs. Beds on the island are limited and sell out in summer along with the bikes at the pier, so this needs booking well ahead. Crossings can be cancelled in bad weather, which is a problem if you have a flight the next day.
Staying without a car
Galway city, Salthill, Oughterard and Kinvara are the four bases that work on public transport, in that order. Everything else in the county assumes a car, and the sights that make Connemara worth the journey (the Sky Road, Derrygimlagh, Dog’s Bay, the Inagh Valley) have no bus at all. If you are car-free and want Connemara, the honest answer is a day coach from the city and a night in Clifden rather than a week in a village.
Bus routes, ferry timetables and parking charges change. Check the operator before you build a day around them.
