Inishmore

For all the Drama students out there – and, yes, I will bring some back for you!

The local shop

After our invigorating time at the fort, we descended, more than a tad windblown, and sought out food. We had a bowl of delicious homemade vegetable soup at the local café: Teach Nan Phaidi Café. Also tried the Irish cider (it’s ok, I prefer Tasmania’s Mercury), but the caramel slice (also homemade and called toffee slice here), was a winner – the caramel/toffee part really was more towards the condensed milk side of the spectrum than we would have it in Australian, but that was NOT a problem!

Does my bum look big in this field?

Our plans for the afternoon were thwarted somewhat due to a change in the weather – the afternoon rains were upon us, and after Driver John dropped us back at the hotel, we pretty much didn’t leave for the rest of the day. We did make an effort later to walk to another fort, but we only got 2 steps out the front door before it started to rain again, but since it was a 45 minute walk one way, we abandoned all hope and went back to blogging! At least we had visited the ‘big one’ – Dun Aenghus.

View from the hotel

One of the many boats being worked on before the season takes off

Dinner was a simple affair, but not boring – we had a Cajun salmon (a welcome bit of spice) and yet another goat’s cheese salad. Pleasant enough, and the wine was palatable, too. After the meal we moved into the foyer area to get more reliable wifi reception. There was a wedding planned for 2 days hence, and an entire extended family had taken over the hotel – we were the only ones not connected to the event.

View of Kilronan from the Inishmore airport

Now, I am sure that I will take this back when the little darlings are yelling and running and slamming doors when I am trying to sleep tonight, but I am (currently) loving the 3 generational hoard that are sharing our accommodation. Our first encounter in the hotel was with young Mr Four who rabbited on with us for quite a lengthy chat when we were depositing our bags – completely charming and captivating – the friendliness and hospitality is obviously in the genes! Later in the evening, a young father was walking towards me with one arm full of 2-and-a-half-year-old, the other arm full of 6-month-old, and I said, “You’ve got your hands full there!” His response, with a big grin, was, “Yeah, and isn’t it grand?!” Lovely attitude to parenthood!

Cottages nestled against the hillside

We managed to cram a lot into the evening hours (blogging, reading, chatting, planning), and left the foyer for our room at about 10:30pm – the music playing live in the restaurant next to us was 80’s classics, and it really wasn’t doing it for us this evening! The other guests partied on for quite some time, but luckily, we had a room at the end of a corridor, so we weren’t disturbed.