The Best Things to Do in Galway This Easter
Easter in Galway has a particular energy to it. The city is busy in the way it gets during its best weekends — animated, welcoming, full of people making the most of the extended break — but the crowds have not yet reached summer proportions. The days are long, the pubs are lively, and the surrounding landscape is doing things that make you genuinely glad to be in the west of Ireland. Here is a thorough guide to the best things to do in Galway this Easter.
Easter Markets and Seasonal Shopping
Galway’s weekend market near St Nicholas’ Collegiate Church in the Latin Quarter is one of the best in Ireland at any time of year. At Easter, it takes on a seasonal character: locally grown spring produce, fresh flowers, artisan foods, handcrafted gifts, and the particular atmosphere of a city that is happy to be outside again after winter. The market runs on Saturdays and Sundays and is best explored in the morning, when the stalls are fully stocked and the nearby cafés are doing a good trade in coffee and pastries.
The Latin Quarter’s independent shops — the boutiques along High Street and Kirwan’s Lane, the craft and knitwear stores that have been trading here for decades — are worth visiting over Easter for anyone looking for gifts or Irish craft pieces. Easter weekend sees a good concentration of visitors with time to browse, and the shopkeepers, many of whom have been in business for generations, are reliably good company.
Family Activities for Easter Weekend
Galway is an excellent destination for families at Easter, with enough to keep children of different ages genuinely engaged across a long weekend.
Galway Atlantaquaria
Ireland’s largest native species aquarium, located in Salthill a short bus journey from the city centre, is one of the most popular Easter destinations for families visiting Galway. Over 150 species of marine and freshwater life, interactive zones, live presentations, and special Easter programming make it an excellent full morning or afternoon. It is busy over the bank holiday weekend, so earlier visits tend to be more comfortable. The Promenade in Salthill is also worth a walk while you are out there — two kilometres of seafront path along Galway Bay with views across to the Clare hills.
Easter Festival at Slieve Aughty Centre
Running from late March through to mid-April, the Easter Festival at the Slieve Aughty Centre near Loughrea offers pony rides, craft workshops, face painting, farm animals, and an enchanted forest trail. It is about forty minutes from Galway city and makes an excellent day trip for families with younger children who want to get out of the city and into the Connacht countryside.
Playgrounds, Parks, and Eyre Square
Eyre Square, right outside the Victoria Hotel, is a comfortable and spacious place for families to spend time over Easter. The park has been at the heart of Galway’s public life for centuries and is a natural gathering point during the bank holiday weekend. Children have room to run, adults have benches and coffee options within reach, and the whole square has the relaxed holiday atmosphere that Easter in a good city produces.
Live Music: Easter in Galway’s Pubs
Easter weekend is one of the best times of year to experience Galway’s live traditional music scene. The bank holiday brings musicians into the city, and the pubs of the Latin Quarter — Tigh Neachtain, Tig Coilí, The Crane, Monroe’s Tavern — run sessions across Good Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Easter Monday. This is not background music arranged for visitors. It is a living tradition that has been happening in these rooms for as long as the rooms have existed.
Good Friday in Galway has a particular character: quieter than the rest of the weekend, more reflective, with the pubs — which have been permitted to open on Good Friday since 2018 — taking on a gentle, unhurried atmosphere quite distinct from a typical weekend night. Easter Saturday and Sunday evenings ramp things up considerably. By late evening in the Latin Quarter, multiple venues are running sessions simultaneously, and the city does what it does best: make everyone feel welcome at whatever point of the evening they arrive.
Day Trips for Easter Weekend
The Easter bank holiday is an excellent time to get out into the surrounding landscape, which is beginning to emerge from winter in spectacular ways.
Connemara
A day trip into Connemara from Galway is one of the most rewarding things you can do with a free day in the west of Ireland. In April, the landscape is in full spring transition: gorse blazing yellow on the hillsides, primroses along the roadsides, the Twelve Bens and the mountains of Connemara still carrying some drama on their upper slopes. Kylemore Abbey, Clifden and the Sky Road, the Connemara National Park — all are accessible within a comfortable day trip, and bus tours run from the city centre over Easter weekend for those without a car.
The Aran Islands
The Aran Islands — Inis Mór, Inis Meáin, and Inis Oírr — are accessible by ferry from Rossaveal, about forty minutes west of Galway. Easter is a particularly good time to visit: the summer tour groups have not arrived, and the islands have an elemental quality in April that suits their starkly beautiful limestone landscape. Dún Aonghasa on Inis Mór — an Iron Age fort at the edge of a sheer cliff dropping three hundred metres into the Atlantic — is one of the most extraordinary places in Ireland and demands to be seen.
The Burren
Drive south from Galway through south Connacht into County Clare and you reach the Burren — a vast limestone plateau with a botanical character found nowhere else in the world. Alpine and Mediterranean wildflowers grow side by side in the cracks of the limestone, and in spring the display begins in earnest. It is about an hour’s drive from the city and makes an excellent afternoon if you want something truly distinctive.
Easter Dining in Galway: Queen Street at the Victoria Hotel
For Easter brunch or dinner in Galway city centre, Queen Street at the Victoria Hotel is where to be. The kitchen takes a genuinely serious approach to seasonal cooking — proper ingredients, well-sourced, prepared with care — and Easter weekend is one of those occasions when the menu reflects the season thoughtfully. A slow Easter Sunday brunch, or a proper Easter dinner without the need to venture far from wherever you have spent the afternoon, is exactly what Queen Street is designed for.
The location on Victoria Place, right on Eyre Square, means you are in the middle of the city while also having somewhere comfortable to retreat to. Easter Sunday brunch here — with the square visible through the windows, the city going about its bank holiday business outside — is the kind of meal that earns its place in how you remember a trip. Book ahead for Easter Sunday: it fills up, and rightly so.
For families, couples, and groups of friends who want something more considered than a quick lunch, Queen Street delivers the right combination of good food, easy atmosphere, and central location. The Easter dinner service in particular is worth planning your day around — a proper meal at the end of a day well spent in Galway city.
A Cocktail Class and Something Different
For Easter visitors who want an experience rather than simply a drink, the cocktail making class at the Victoria Hotel is a consistently well-received option. No prior knowledge required: you learn to make several proper cocktails, you drink what you make, and the session is social and entertaining in a way that suits both couples and groups. It is a good option for Easter Saturday particularly — a lively and convivial evening activity before heading out into the Latin Quarter.
Walking Galway at Easter
Easter is an excellent time to walk Galway. The Long Walk along the waterfront near the Spanish Arch is at its most peaceful on Easter Sunday morning, when the city is quiet and the swans have the river to themselves. The canal walk along the Eglinton Canal offers a green, unhurried alternative route through a part of the city most visitors never find. Eyre Square and the connecting streets to the Latin Quarter are pleasant in any spring weather.
A self-guided walking tour of Galway’s medieval heritage — taking in Lynch’s Castle, St Nicholas’ Church, the Spanish Arch, and Kirwan’s Lane — can be done in two hours and gives an excellent foundation for understanding a city with eight hundred years of history beneath its contemporary surface.
Stay at the Victoria for Easter
The Victoria Hotel on Victoria Place puts you at the heart of everything for Easter in Galway. Eyre Square is on your doorstep, the Latin Quarter is five minutes on foot, and Queen Street is in the building for when the city has done its job and all you want is a great meal and a good drink. View our rooms, our food and drink options, and Easter packages, and book directly with us for the best available rate. Easter in Galway — do it from the centre.
