The Roadside Tavern is a good old-fashioned family-run Irish pub, hosting excellent trad sessions and Ireland’s first micro-brewery.

From food to festivals, culture to shopping, Galway has it all and that’s before you even step outside the city.

Behind the clockwork-efficiency of the state dinner for Queen Elizabeth lay tales of last-minute mercy flights to Dublin, six-hour dashes across the country with smoked salmon and ‘forever secret’’ ingredients. Pól Ó Conghaile gets the real story