So do we just wait for the cow to move?

After the prior day's events, this day was just for taking it easy. We didn't rush to get up early, or anything like that, and owing to the size of the giant meal the night before, it was nearly impossible. However, when staying in hotels and like, there's only a limited amount of time to take advantage of the breakfast you've already paid for. We held off as long as possible, but eventually we would miss the whole thing. So ready or not, it was time to eat again. For this is the way of things when traveling in Ireland. Plus, let's be honest, the dinner was pretty fantastic, so it would be a shame to miss out on good food right?

It was pretty much more of the same Irish breakfast stuff, but notched up a little in the quality department. The jam was ridiculously good actually, and I ate what some might call too much toast. Plus they had good juice that was perhaps as fresh as one could expect citrus to be in that part of the world.

After that, we trundled back up the 3 flights of stairs spiraling up the middle of the hotel to our room, and feeling vaguely uncomfortable with the level of manservantude, we carried our own bags down, rather than ringing for the bellman. By the way, it should be noted, that it was the same bellman from yesterday. He was clearly there until at least midnight, and now he was there in the morning. Several of the servers and busboys from the late dinner were also on breakfast duties. I realize you pay a lot for the luxury of this experience, but there's a little part of me that thinks, "if I was that guy, working his face off, I'd hate me for enjoying myself in his midst." Apparently, that's some working class angst I'll have to work out before I can truly live the life of the wealthy bon vivant. Of course, that's likely some time from now. It may also be likely that I never get over that. Maybe that's a good thing.

The other great thing about Ballynahinch is not just that there's a hotel, but these beautiful grounds, along side the loch and a couple of streams. This place is all about fishing, which we're not so much into, but it makes for beautiful scenery. We left the stuff in the car, and took one of their walks along the loch. It's not a whole lot different from Maine, and the lakes and woods I was used to growing up, except that there are no mosquitos, and the greens are all just a little brighter. Nearly every direction you turn, there's something else that's beautiful. I've said the same about the rest of Ireland, but it was never more true than it was in the Connemara area.

The whole time we were walking, the rain would start up and mist us, and then go away. For some reason, you just sort of ignore it. There wasn't the blind panic that the sky was about to open up and drench you, but you just sort of knew it would pass. We annoyed some fly fishermen (who wear far more equipment than I understand the need for), and were shooed away from their fishing spot, and just enjoyed a walk through the woods, which we don't get to do very often. In fact, I'm fairly certain Lindsay and I could count the number of times we've walked in woods on one, maybe two hands at most. This is just wrong.

We hopped back in our car, which was starting to get quite a crusty exterior at this point, and took off through the streams and bogs. Just outside of the gates of the hotel, we slowed quickly to a crawl when there were numerous sheep in the road. We got past them, went another short stretch, and encountered a large number of lumbering cows, and there's really no way to get them out of the road. I can tell you that beeping doesn't work. It's even possible that they're deaf, because there was no recognition. They finally moved out of the way, but Lindsay made me drive through them slowly so she could take pictures of them. There's something about the way they drive in Ireland that made me want always want to be going as fast as possible when on the road and driving. So on the one hand, I was terrified that someone would come up behind us at the speed of sound, and on the other hand, I was picturing a very slow moving cow atrocity. In the end, there were no such events.


At this point, it was fairly late in the day. We were headed for Sligo, which can be pronounced Sleego or Slygo, depending on who you are talking to. But we had no real plans for the day, so we basically drove up along the coast some more, and looked at really pretty views, over and over. I'll just show you some of what we saw that day, because I'm basically out of ways to describe things at this point. I realize this is no way for a writer to be, but there you are.


Around four in the afternoon, we decided to stop at Kylemore Abbey, which is basically the former castle/retreat of a rich English family from the late 1800's, which was later donated to an order of benedictine nuns, who now run a boarding school for girls, as well as a tourist trap/beautiful building for passersby. When I saw this place on a brochure, I immediately said, "We should go there," because it was so picturesque. Then I could say I was a little disappointed, because A) it's not really that old, relatively speaking B) It's sort of a symbol of rich English people living in enormous splendor among who knows how many poor Irish people, and C) It was sort of expensive, and we didn't realize that we didn't really have to pay for looking and taking pictures until after we did so. But then I read about it a bit, and the literature, which could certainly be biased, suggested that the family who built the place weren't horrible people, and created lots of local jobs by building the place.

There were these Victorian gardens you had to take a shuttle over to see, and for some reason, I decided that we should go see them, since we paid I guess, despite the fact that I had no real desire to see the gardens, and Lindsay repeatedly suggested as much. As such, we took the shuttle over, got out, looked around, and got back on the bus ten minutes later. Now, this isn't to say that they weren't nice gardens. They certainly were, if you're into that sort of thing. Oddly enough, the thing we found the most interesting was the vegetable garden, where we looked at the plants of such things as peas, tomatoes, various herbs, and other completely run of the mill vegetation. I realize we could see this almost anywhere, but we were here. But not for very long.

Then you go into the castle/museum, which actually only had 3 rooms open to peruse. This is because the place is an operating International girls boarding school, as mentioned previously. That meant there were these really stark signs around every corner expressly forbidding entrance to anywhere. It was like a military compound, protecting nuclear missiles, except it was a bunch of nuns protecting a bunch of 13 year old girls. Of course, I understand that, but it was still odd to see some of the girls outside, looking like normal kids. I figured they would keep them under lock and key, exposing them to as little light as possible.

On the way out, there's a small hill, with like 3 sheep just chomping away at the grass. This was easily the closest Lindsay had gotten to one so far, and she got as close as she could for pictures. I would say they're a little ugly close up, as well as being an animal devoid of almost any personality. There's some merit to the idea of calling people who just go along as sheep. But then, sheep don't really go along with anything, unless that thing is eating grass. Constantly.

Sligo was perhaps the first place where we got lost. In every other place, we just followed the signs and drove the roundabouts towards the "city centre," which we did in Sligo, but it didn't get us any closer. Or so we thought. We were looking for a place called Pearse Lodge, located on Pearse road. It may sound odd, but we hadn't had to deal with street names and addresses in almost a week. And for good reason, because there certainly weren't any street signs, or numbers on anything. We turned around a couple times, thanking god that I'd gotten used to the left-hand driving by this point, and saw the word Pearse a couple times, but eventually, I had to stop and ask at a local mini-mart place. He had no idea what the place was, but asked me if I knew her name, which I didn't. But he pointed to the road in front of me, and said, "well, that's Pearse road, so it should be right there." It turns out we were pretty much there already, and just didn't know it. So once again, we found it without really trying, but we just weren't quite aware of it. So I'm adding to our tally as a win.

Mary and her husband Kieran run the Pearse Lodge, which is basically just another Bed and Breakfast, but if you look them up on the web, you'll find glowing reviews of their place from all sorts of people. There was a good reason for that. They're very nice, and they run a nice place. This might have been the first time in the whole trip where someone was genuinely above and beyond nice and helpful to us. Don't get me wrong, the others were nice, but Mary was really invested in talking with us, and making sure we were OK, and she talked to us, and I hate talking to strangers, but I liked her a great deal. She told us all these places we could go in town and all kinds of different restaurants, and had maps and all sorts of stuff. Plus, they had a huge number of things to choose from for breakfast.

For dinner we learned that, no matter what it looks like, for the most part, the best Italian food in Ireland is going be less than you'd expect in America. The servers were very friendly, and they tried their damnedest, but really, it was just kind of average. But it's funny, where in the rest of the world, had I converted the money to dollars and known how much I spent for average food, I might have been unhappy, at this point, Lindsay and I were having so much fun together that we really weren't disappointed with average food. It might sound cheesy, but for once, I sort of knew what it was like to not be picky, and just be happy with the experience. We then had some chocolate cake that was not really anything special either, but we were having a good time, so it was pretty good all the same.

Sligo at night felt a little more rowdy and raw than many of the places we'd been . That's perhaps because it wasn't a town so focused on tourists, but rather it was more of a regular place where working people lived. So it was a little more shady walking around at night than most of where we'd been. That's not a bad thing at all, we walked with a little more alertness that we'd been using. We decided to call it a night though, and went back to our brightly painted room, and got to bed. Not exciting no, but it was a big day.

In the morning, we'd make the final leg of the trip in a northerly direction, and be off to Donegal. We did not know that waiting for us would be, perhaps the most spectacular view we'd ever seen. Or course, what Lindsay will always remember will be the sheep.