Day Ten. Thursday.

...from the travel journal...




Joan drove Jared, Belinda and I into the town of Kilkenny, which was, as was most all of the towns we visited, a lovely place with brightly painted shop fronts. These towns all support a butcher shop or two or three and an entire host of other shops catering to individual tastes and categories. No big mall here, the center of town is where it�s at, and that�s a very good thing I think. It�s all very scenic and quaint to the American eye, but it�s all real. It�s the way they do it in Ireland.



We took a look at the big castle in town, where the lords who used to own the lands where the cottage is located once lived and ruled.



Next to the castle was the stables area with a dozen large buildings, (the pic above just one of them, that Joan said I should tell you was "her house in town, hehe)!, now containing a great number of craft shops and a caf� where we had coffees and a mid morning snack. I decided to have the sausage roll, something that I wouldn�t have confidently ordered anywhere else. But in Ireland, it seems that you can�t get a bad sausage. The little pork rashers in puff pastry were lovely, as was the young man who heated them up for us, probably the nelly-est young man that I had yet seen in all of Ireland.



We walked back to the car, stopping on the way at an open air market to buy some home made breads for lunch. I looked in a second hand shop for some religious icon things for Robert, but the stuff there was scary, even for Robert�s tastes!

Saw this Guinness sign, (very common to see Guinness signs everywhere), but this one all in Gaelic.




We got back to the cottage and had another delightful lunch and then Jared and I fired up the rental car...


Jared and Darryl ready to go...



...and Meave, the dog thinking she was going with...





...and headed to Dublin with sister Deirdre as navigator and guide. We passed through another half dozen absolutely charming towns on the way. I mean it was beginning to get monotonous! This constant profusion of beautiful countryside and quaint towns! You know, I am red/green color blind, (as is Jared, btw), but even I could see how green was this land!

We got back into Dublin. Parked the car at Belinda�s and Jared and I took the bus to Dublin City Centre. We did some last minute shopping and got back on the bus to Belinda�s, but totally missed the stop and went waaaaay to the end of the line, where the driver took pity on us, (poor lost Americans) and let us ride back to Belinda�s for no extra charge. We felt a little dumb, but no shame.

We went from there to Joan and Uli�s house in Dublin, where we had a Guinness and some very delightful crispy thin crust pizzas that Uli made, one of them with Cashel Blue cheese.! Got back to Belinda�s house, talked for a bit and then hit the hay, as we had to get packed and on the road to the airport for our return flight to the U.S in the morning.

You know, ten days was just not enough� this country had begun to seep into my consciousness. I didn�t want to leave. I�m certain that I will return.//

�end of travel journal�



The people that I met were wonderful; the famed �Irish hospitality� is a real thing! And the countryside is beautiful, absolutely beautiful! It was hard to take a bad picture. It was easy to have a very good time.

The Trip Home.

We got up, we got ready and after breakfast with Belinda, we said our goodbyes.

I can�t say enough nice things about Belinda, our hostess in Dublin! She not only let us stay in her lovely house, but gave us breakfast, tips, directions and guidance and took time out to show us around Dublin. She�s a total treasure and I have no doubt that most of my regular readers would find her delightful! Her sister Deirdre and her sister Joan and her husband Uli were also fantastic, having us over for meals, letting us stay at the cottage, (a place so incredibly charming�) and just generally making us feel like welcome friends at every minute of the day! I have to say that for me, meeting them really made our stay in Ireland special. I�m looking forward to seeing them again someday soon.

Our drive to return the rental car was mostly un-eventful, a wrong turn or two, but we found the place in good time. As we were completing the return process and waiting for the shuttle bus to the terminal, these two guys from Wisconsin that we had met the day we picked up the car pulled into the parking lot! They had been in the north and we had been in the south and we were all returning to the U.S. on the same day. They reported a good time as well.

We got to the terminal, got checked in and walked to the shopping area, where we picked up a lot of duty free stuff, good prices and a remarkably good selection. I also discovered that we could bring food into the U.S., especially cheese! I picked up a Gubbeen, and a smoked Gubbeen, (which is not available in the U.S. so far, well at least until a few weeks from now, when I will be the first to offer it for sale in the U.S.!)

We went through the various checkpoints and got on the plane. There was a delay, (someone didn�t clear and their luggage had to be taken off), but we finally took off. We had better seats than on the way over and it was the middle of the afternoon, so it was quite pleasant. After a rather dreadful little airline meal, (we had gotten so spoiled!), we settled in for the remainder of the flight. The in-flight movie was �Something�s Got To Give� with Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton. I don�t usually watch the in-flight stuff, but I did this time, and I am glad I did. At one point, I realized that the background noise that I heard over the soundtrack in the headphones was laughter, people on the plane laughing out loud at an in-flight movie! Amazing! Nicholson was great and Keaton was fabulously funny! Even Keanu Reeves did a bit more than look good. Just brilliant!

We arrived at Logan airport in Boston over an hour late, and the baggage thing was a mess, as it most often is at Logan. I was expecting a bit of delay with customs� but we were just waved through! The guy hardly looked at us!

My brother and my niece were there to meet us, which was sweet. Jared and I hugged goodbye and headed our separate ways; he to his car in Jamaica Plain and I with my brother and niece to Pembroke, on the south shore, where I spent a quiet day and a half before returning to New Orleans Sunday morning.

I went into work Sunday afternoon for the evening shift and by nine P.M. I was a stupefied mess! (It was two A.M. Dublin time!) It was pretty dumb to schedule an evening shift for myself that soon after my return, but fortunately, the team member I was working with was very sweet and understanding. And what�s a lil� jet lag after such an amazing trip, eh?

To close this, I must say that Jared, �Massy�, was a really great traveling companion! (He did all the driving, an amazing feat in itself!) But he was also fun to travel with; his sense of adventure was true, his enjoyment of what we encountered matched mine in so many ways, and where our interests differed, we seemed to be able to comfortably accommodate both views.

It was great, Jared, and thank you!

durlx