Galway is the hinge of the Wild Atlantic Way, the city where the coast road leaves the busy east behind and heads out into Connemara. Gaillimh is its Irish name, and you will hear plenty of Irish spoken in the country to the west, which is one of the largest Gaeltacht regions in the country. The city itself has around eighty thousand people, a large university, and a reputation for music, festivals and long evenings in pubs that it fully deserves.
The old town is compact, built around the mouth of the River Corrib, which runs fast and short from Lough Corrib to the sea. Galway grew as a walled Anglo-Norman trading town, controlled for centuries by fourteen merchant families, the so-called Tribes of Galway, which is why it is still called the City of the Tribes. They traded wine and salt with Spain and France, and you can see their legacy in a few surviving stone townhouses, including Lynch's Castle on Shop Street, and in the Spanish Arch by the river. The Claddagh, across the water, was a fishing village with its own customs and gave its name to the famous ring with two hands holding a crowned heart.
For riders, Galway is a place to stop, not to ride through quickly. Traffic in the city can be heavy and slow, the ring roads are congested at rush hour, and parking a bike near the centre is easiest in the early morning. Once you are out, the coast road west through Bearna and Spiddal runs along Galway Bay with the Burren's grey limestone hills visible across the water to the south, and the Aran Islands on the horizon. The road is narrow and bumpy in places, with stone walls close on both sides, so take it easy, and expect rain at any time of year: the Atlantic weather blows in fast and often.
Galway is the best place on this stretch to sort out fuel, food and anything mechanical. There are plenty of filling stations on the approach roads and the city has everything else. Eat seafood while you are here: oysters from Galway Bay are famous, celebrated each September at an oyster festival, and fish and chips by the water is a ritual. In July the arts festival and the Galway Races fill every hotel bed for miles around, so book ahead or plan to stay further out.