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7:53 am
The morning is bright and there is a lot of haze along the coast which is only
about 1/4 mile away.
Except for the haze, the sky looks completely clear.
9:21 am
Breakfast of cereal for Susan & full Irish for me
music is trad with lots of uillean pipes.
Owners here 6 years
pretty pony house
took panoramic
email panorama & chief impressions
I highly recommend Sheepwalk House. It's a beautiful house
(evidently largely rebuilt by the McCabes) and the McCabes are very friendly
people and excellent hosts.
Jim completely rebuilt the pony house into a self catering cottage. We
took a walk through it on the way out and I certainly wouldn't mind staying
there someday (although I might have to find a way to keep going in for Jim's breakfasts).
Regina McCabe asked me to send her our impressions of Chief
O'Neill's. Her daughter had seen it or stayed there and didn't care
for the minimalist decor. We were actually looking forward to it as a
change from the rest of the trip.
10:36 am
Susan's driving
we're off to Avoca to email
That's something that's really nice about Ireland (at least, nice for
Internet dependent tourists). There's some kind of public Internet access
just about everywhere. In Avoca it was in the library which really wasn't
much larger than a typical gift shop.
We sent off a few emails to the family and left for Dublin.
11:01 am
Leaving bk
Ballykissangel. I know it's not, but it is.
11:09 am
Getting gas. Full service twice. Should we tip?
This was the second time we'd had someone run out and start filling up
our car. Unfortunately we didn't think about the possibility of tipping
until afterwards. It just doesn't happen over here.
11:12 am
On the 11,hauling.pretty hills to the left outside Arklow. The sheep laying down
look like caterpillars.
Signs: Heavy plant crossing, Dangerous bridge ahead
(on road) Slow (how slow?)
The sheep really did look like fat caterpillars. When they're
laying down you can't see their legs and with their black faces, they look like
something that a bird is going to swoop down and grab.
I made a note about the signs because some of the signs in Ireland are quite
humorous. The heavy plant crossing was a good one as I immediately
pictured a huge (heavy) plant crossing the road. Dangerous Bridge was one
where what was dangerous was the fact that there was a sharp curve as you
crossed the bridge. The bridge was quite tame.
We would also see signs telling drivers to go slow (often when construction was
going on) but never how slow. Most drivers seemed to ignore those signs.
11:52 am
On the outskirts of Dublin. *sigh* no more scenery
No more scenery. We've entered the
city. We also had
to deal with the fact that we didn't have directions to the hotel and most of
the drivers on the roads were actively trying to kill us. All in all this
was a bad time as we tried to get to Chief
O'Neill's.
1:52 pm
Here. Nice room, no view.
The only thing we could see outside our room (until the following night)
was the unattractive square, but the room was very nice.
2:27 pm
Bar. House beer, Maeve's crystal
the house is somewhat bitter, but good
Time to get used to noise again. Both Susan & I are having to repeat ourselves a lot because it's noisy here.
Welcome to civilization.
Do you get the idea we weren't glad to be back in the city? It was
nice to have some of the amenities available in a large city, but getting used
to the drawbacks was a bit painful. Having to talk louder was one drawback
that we noticed immediately. We'd become used to lower ambient noise over
the previous two weeks and our general speech volume had decreased without us
really noticing, until we got back into a large city.
While we were sitting at the bar, we borrowed a yellow pages and wrote down some
of the dance stores in walking distance. A bit later and we were off
hiking/shopping.
4:20 pm
Looking for dance stores in dublin 1
We didn't have any luck finding what we wanted at the first two so we set
about going to one which a friend had recommended.
5:28 pm
Fay's, we're buying 3 pair of shoes.
We went to the address listed in the phone book and found a dead
store. At first we thought we'd wasted all that time until I went to the
corner store to ask if they knew what had happened to Fay's. Fortunately
they had a flyer for the new location (evidently they'd been there some time)
and gave us directions. A bit later we were in the store.
We were surprised to find that it wasn't strictly a retail store but rather the
place where they actually make the shoes. When we walked in, there were
two men in the rear 3/4 of the shop, working on some shoes (there was also a
heavy scent of glue and other chemicals). They do keep some shoes on hand
for walk-in customers to try on but don't keep extras that may be purchased and
taken away. Had we known, we probably would have set aside more time at
the beginning of the trip to run by.
As it was, we set about talking with one of the men and trying on several pair of shoes
before placing our order. With luck, we'll have the shoes three weeks
after placing our order.
We were extremely lucky that we arrived when we did as moments after we left,
they closed the store for the day.
8:26 pm
O'Neill's bar
Rum & coke, Smithwicks
Guinness casserole, veg plate
2 baileys for dessert
We staked out a table and had dinner, drinks and played cards.
9:06 pm
band is warming up
fiddle, uilleann pipes, concertina, guitar, flute
I wish there had been an unobtrusive place to get up and dance.
*sigh* There wasn't. The band was good and my legs really wanted me
to get up and move around.
9:50 pm
There are step dancers performing for a group downstairs.
Our counterparts in Ireland (meaning, some dancers for hire) had been
booked to perform at a special function. On my way back from the little
boys room, I ran into several of them heading for "backstage" to get ready to
perform. I spoke briefly with one of them but unfortunately didn't think
to ask if they did Ceili dancing (I later thought about trying to get them to
join us for a set). I wasn't able to run into
them again before they finished their performance and left the building.
10:26 pm
Back in room.
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Harrison
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Last modified: Thursday, April 24, 2008