Szilvia GombolaGetting Small Towns on the Map
March 8th 2007 07:09
Small towns are great (to paraphrase John Cougar Mellencamp).
OK, maybe not to live, breathe, work and die in the same small town but definitely to visit. I was born and bred in a city and now live on the beach in a ‘smallish’ place. It is small enough to get around easily and big enough to have everything I want. You also get to know a few people.
Big is not always better, especially when you are travelling. The big cities have the big attractions but you are just another tourist among the hordes. In the small towns you can really sink your teeth into another culture. You can interact with the locals and see how they go about their daily lives. Often, they don’t get up to much at all - which is pretty much what people in small towns do all over the world. And that’s the appeal for the traveller because you get to watch them doing not much at all, while you do the same, and in the process you probably learn more about another country and its people than you could from any museum.
On our most recent travels, we visited some big well-known cities such as Paris, Oslo, Dublin, Belfast, Rome and Florence.
However, it was little-known Mallow in northern County Cork, Ireland, that won us over with its small town charm.
It wasn’t the best place we saw and certainly not the biggest, or even the smallest.
We visited other smaller towns along the way but, through a combination of local friends and needing a rest, Mallow ended up being one of the longest stays of our trip. There are no real tourist sights in Mallow, so it is just a matter of hanging out - in the true spirit of small towns everywhere.
Sure Paris has the Eiffel Tower and Rome has the Colloseum but Mallow has a new shopping complex with a Dunnes department store and a Pizza Hut, which was very nice by the way, and also a big Tesco’s with self-service facilities.
People often ask what we did in Mallow for three nights. Well, we had a bit of a lie in each day, a big breakfast, a few cups of tea, I got my beard trimmed at the local barbers, we did some washing at the laundromat and went to a few pubs at night. We also found that Mallow was a highly inconvenient location from which to explore Cork’s more famous coastal attractions, which suited us just fine as we love driving around a lot and getting lost.
Overall, it was just the vibe and the fact that Mallow, like lots of other little-known small towns out there, is a nice place with nice people.
Would love to hear any other small town travel stories.
OK, maybe not to live, breathe, work and die in the same small town but definitely to visit. I was born and bred in a city and now live on the beach in a ‘smallish’ place. It is small enough to get around easily and big enough to have everything I want. You also get to know a few people.
Big is not always better, especially when you are travelling. The big cities have the big attractions but you are just another tourist among the hordes. In the small towns you can really sink your teeth into another culture. You can interact with the locals and see how they go about their daily lives. Often, they don’t get up to much at all - which is pretty much what people in small towns do all over the world. And that’s the appeal for the traveller because you get to watch them doing not much at all, while you do the same, and in the process you probably learn more about another country and its people than you could from any museum.
However, it was little-known Mallow in northern County Cork, Ireland, that won us over with its small town charm.
It wasn’t the best place we saw and certainly not the biggest, or even the smallest.
We visited other smaller towns along the way but, through a combination of local friends and needing a rest, Mallow ended up being one of the longest stays of our trip. There are no real tourist sights in Mallow, so it is just a matter of hanging out - in the true spirit of small towns everywhere.
Sure Paris has the Eiffel Tower and Rome has the Colloseum but Mallow has a new shopping complex with a Dunnes department store and a Pizza Hut, which was very nice by the way, and also a big Tesco’s with self-service facilities.
Overall, it was just the vibe and the fact that Mallow, like lots of other little-known small towns out there, is a nice place with nice people.
Would love to hear any other small town travel stories.
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