Travel, particularly, solo travel, is so high-variance.  One minute you can be thrilled to be wherever you are and not wanting to go home ever, and just a few hours later - without anything in particular happening - you can be wondering why you decided to make the trip so damn long.

Weekends are particularly difficult times for travel.  It seems like the usual hostelling population - lone travelers and pairs who keep to themselves and have a tendency toward early hours - is eclipsed on weekends by a population I can only refer to as Drunken Idiots.  They arrive in the city for one night, primarily to drink, and they travel in huge packs, and they are loud.  Also, they tend to be already drunk when they arrive, and the men among them leer at any women they can lay their eyes on - even women as bedraggled as I am at the moment (aside from the missing half of my front tooth, my lip is still obviously beaten up, and I have several scratches still on my face, and of course every garment I own is dirty or damp or both, and I've spent the past ten days in a country without proper hot water).  I can't determine any reason for their existence except that possibly they have already been banned from every bar in their own city.

There's nothing wrong with Galway, really.  It's a small city with some medieval remains.  I'm going to try to take a walking tour tomorrow to learn more about them.  I had a pretty good afternoon today - after waiting for several dozen DIs (probably I'll have to talk about these Drunken Idiots again, so I might as well have a handy abbreviation) to vacate the lobby, which is located on what in the US would be called the fourth floor, I left my bag and took a walk around.  Most of what there is to do here (before 6 p.m. on non-Sundays, at least) is shop - there's one museum, but it's open about two days a week, and every other historical site is by appointment only, which is very popular here.  I went into a few places but was not feeling too excited about the same sweaters and jewelry as everywhere else; however, they do have some nice bookstores, and a nice river, and it seems like there are some recommended "long walks" if the weather is nice tomorrow.  I went into a coffee shop and had a nice "salad" (salads here consist mostly of cheese and bacon, which is not really the American definition of the term) and "cake" (British for dessert) and sat for a while, and then I walked around some more.  By seven, everything had been closed for ages and it was too cold outside to sit, so I came back to the hostel.

The hostel makes me homesick.  I think I'm much too old and antisocial for these places, although European hotels are really no better - more privacy, but fewer amenities and even more barren; often just as much noise.  I miss the cycling group and I miss home; I might wish I'd decided to go home earlier, but of course I probably wouldn't be able to get back because of the impending hurricane.