Thursday, August 9, 2007

In the morning we had another great breakfast and then the kids and I played with the kittens while Mark loaded up the car. Said a fond farewell to Breeda and Sliabh gCua, and set off for Kinsale via the scenic ocean route. We stopped at Ardmore (Tidy Town), an ocean resort town, en route, and the kids looked for seashells on the beach. I really feel for the Irish, this was their holiday season and all they got was rainy cold weather. We did still see a couple of families trying to make a beach day of it anyway. Then the kids played on some really cool playground equipment we don’t have in the US.  After that we had a nice lunch at a restaurant called the Whitehorses where I learned what I wanted to order for Charlotte was a toasted cheese sandwich, not a grilled cheese sandwich because when you ask for grilled cheese what you get is a piece of thick brown Irish bread with cheese melted on it (Charlotte was not happy!). After lunch we went to check out the Round Tower, which is one of the better preserved ones in Ireland. A round tower is where the monks went to hide when the Vikings came to steal the jewels they stored for the rich townspeople. They would use a ladder to get inside and stay there until the Vikings went away. Also nearby there was a ruined church and old graveyard that was very interesting, along with some Ogham stones which were marked in the old Celtic language (just slashes really). Then we went on to Kinsale (guess what, it’s a Tidy Town!). As I predicted, this B & B, Danabel House, was not as nice. The owner seemed a little put out by us and the rooms were nice enough but small, and expensive. Which is not to say it was bad, or that I wouldn’t stay there again. Just not as nice as the last place.  There was a French family with a boy of maybe 18 months staying their too and they must have taken a ferry over because there car was so packed there’s no way they got all that stuff on a plane. By now it was raining again so we stayed in our rooms for a bit and then went to explore the town and have dinner. It’s a cute town with a nice harbor but the drizzle made it hard to enjoy. We had fish and chips and realized that we don’t actually like fish and chips (although the french fries were of course fabulous, just like they are all over Ireland). That night Mark went to check email at an Internet cafe and got the bad news that our dog, Shadow, had had an episode of bloat and stomach torsion and it wasn’t clear if she was going to make it through surgery.

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