We heard the rain pounding all night. We weren’t sure what we would wake up to. It was sunny, then raining again. A basic breakfast was provided here, toast, cereal, yogurt, tea and instant coffee. Coffee not as bad as some other coffee we have had this trip :). We pick up lunch fixings at the grocery store across the parking lot. Load up our car and off we go. This is our route today.
The sun came out and we had great day! Stu is continuing with his sheep theme. It is Saturday and there are a number of cycling events happening along our route. Going west it was interesting to see all of the cyclists. However, when we turned to go back we had to manoeuvre around them. At times they rode 3 abreast, with oncoming traffic on the windy narrow roads, it was at times a bit frightening.
At Molly Gallivan’s we stop to buy Stu a “flat cap”. An Irish Cap that he has named “Irish Stu” 🙂 and I find a geocache!
We reach the sea again. The sun is still shinning.
We arrive in Kinsale, where we have booked at B&B over the phone. The address is just a street. Google maps initially takes us a funny way, where we end up in a place we are sure isn’t our B&B, The Golden Garden. We decide to find a pub, use their wifi and figure out where we need to go. Once we get closer to the town, the Google maps girl, who Stu now has a love hate relationship with, decides to start telling us where to go. We think she might be right, so we follow her new directions and low and behold we arrive “at our destination”!! Our hostess Bernie, shows us our room and gives us the low down on the town of Kinsale. We head into the town which is about 5 to 10 minutes downhill. This means it is 15 to minutes back up hill when we are done. We find a pub called “Oscar Madison’s” It is a sports bar and filled with locals watching Manchester United playing some other team that I forget. I suspect the other team is the one the locals are all cheering for. We finish our beer and stroll around to choose our place for dinner. It is a very charming town!!
We are invited to use the living room to watch TV and Bernie sits and chats with us. She is in her 80’s I would guess, but is incredibly spry and lively. This is our room for tonight. Stu will likely take outside photos of it tomorrow. We are paying 80 euros which includes breakfast. Probably not instant coffee 🙂
As we were in the living room enjoying our wine, a man arrives. He asks if he can watch the news. Of course we tell him. It turns out that he is a retired teacher from Dublin who is what he termed a “chauffeur tour guide”. He is contracted by an Irish company who sells tours to people. He says the customers contact his company and say we want to tour Ireland for a week, his company says sure, give us $10,000 and they say OK. He drives them around giving them general Irish history and knowledge. When they get to the sites/cities that they request there is a local guide that fills in the specific details for that particular place. He is quite entertaining, so I’m sure he is good at his job. He says he gets his teachers pension, a per diem from the travel company and a tip at the end!! Quite fun.
Our plans for tomorrow are a bit undecided. We’ll see how the day plays out 🙂