We picked St Martins as we saw how close to the city centre it was by map. This was important to us, as we were not comfortable driving on the roads since we are used to driving on the right side of the road. Being so close to the city was great since we are keen on discovering the environments in cities on foot, and not by car. Galway is a great city to discover by foot as you can get around to much of the sights in the centre without using public transport. On arrival Mary (proprietor) told us to park our car down the street by the Cathedral church. The only problem was we had was to drive around the block, As it was my turn I was not looking forward to it. After a few wrong turns I got there and parking was 5 euro which wasn't too bad. Mary asked us would we like a cup of tea but we declined as i needed something stronger for my nerves after the drive from Dublin. Lol.. We only stayed in St Martins 2 nights but all 4 of us found it to very nice, safe, clean and very central. We enjoyed the company of Mary and her two comical dogs following morning breakfast. She is a great source of knowledge about what is on or what to see in the city. Breakfast was splendid and I cannot wait for our next visit!

We stayed at the St Martin's for one night during our trip to Ireland. The location and surrounding of the place are just awesome! You can't beat them! The landlady really is a character and we found her charming : she really tried to make ourselves feel at home and we had the most wonderful time at breakfast. The only drawback was the bathroom : I don't know if the landlady did not have time to finish cleaning it but there were hair in many different places... and cobwebs in the quite dusty bedroom. Mind you, all the linens were clean and I prefer thinking that this charming host just lacked time to finish preparing the room.

My husband and I don't understand how anyone could rate this place as anything other then horrible and disappointing. First of all the picture she has posted is very misleading. It gives the impression that this is the entrance, when in fact this is the back garden that you have to go through the house to get to and it over looks a dirty waterway that smells. I'm attaching photos to this so you can see the actual entrance. It resides on a dirty, narrow side street with no parking. Mary did give us her parking spot, but had the B&B been full, other guests would have had to pay 22 Euro to park in the car park across the street for 24 hours. Upon entry into the establishment, the floors were dirty and the place looked as if it needed a good cleaning. The railway on the stair case felt grimey. The room (pictures also attached) was extremely small and cramped, the shower was filthy dirty with a used bar of soap in the stall. There were cobwebs throughout. The dresser which was crammed up against the foot of the bed was dusty and had food spills which needed cleaning up. When I pulled back the covers of one of the beds, it looked as though the sheets and pillow cases had not been changed as the bed was soiled and dirty as well. At that point my husband and I made the decision to leave. We explained to Mary our reasons and were quickly shown the door. She was anything but friendly from the get go and it's apparent that these people just don't care about the business or their guests. In reading the previous reviews, we are scratching our heads wondering if she may have had friends write these reviews because our experience was the complete opposite. We're not pickey people, but this place was disgusting!

This is the first review I have ever given of a place I have not actually stayed in...but this is also the first time the owner of a hotel/B&B has hung up on me mid conversation!

I have been planning a trip to Galway with my parents, who are not familiar with the area and I asked if Mary had any pictures available of the rooms. This caused a tirade about how she "doesn't want anymore stress in her life" and that if anyone needed pictures then she wasn't interested. I tried to explain that we don't need them as such it was just a friendly query in case she had some.....but all I got was "no, no, no - i can't have ANY more stress in my life, no more stress, oh no, no, no , some people come here and want the red carpet out for them, I can't stand it oh, no, no, no.... have dogs to walk, that's the door, i have to go!" Click, then nothing.

I would like to stress that I was nothing but pleasant and that we were in the final stages of finalising the booking. Quite something....

So be warned. By the sounds of it, you will do St Martin's B&B a favour by going elsewhere.

E. Lofgren