Leaving Jane and Carrick

It’s 8:30AM, Papa and I just boarded the bus to Limerick, Ennis, and the Cliffs of Moher. It’s a two hour bus ride so I’ll use this time to write about yesterday’s events.

We started off the day with a full Irish breakfast at the Carraig Hotel. It’s one egg over-easy with two different kinds of sausage (both sort of spicy), bacon, a hashbrown, and toast. The bacon was actually what we call ham. It was pretty good. I wasn’t a huge fan of the sausage but the rest of it was tasty. The good thing about the meal is that it really holds you over for a long time. We didn’t need another thing to eat until that evening.

· After breakfast we took a walk around town, stopping at the internet café to see if we could hook our laptops up there. Then we walked down the street to where they were starting a bike race for military forces. We only stayed for a bit but got to see the Belgian, German, and Irish riders depart. It was pretty legit.. they had the caravan of vans and cars following after each rider. Fans holding their country’s flag were lined up on the street to support their country. We saw what we wanted to see and started up on our walk again.

· We walked down a street to the river where we crossed a bridge built in the fifteenth century by soldiers. It was made of stone and very narrow. On the other side of the bridge was the town of Carrick-Keg. Which means Carrick on the mountain I think because it lay on the side of a big hill. There wasn’t much to see there but we walked down the street which ran alongside the river and then we crossed back over on another bridge. From that bridge we had a nice view of a big mountain in the distance. It looked a lot different than the mountains in New England because there were no trees on it. You could see the road all the way up to the top and if we had more time in Carrick I would have liked to climb up it.

· We headed back to Jane’s to get ready to leave with Libby, Barbara, and Jane for Waterford. Libby is the daughter of Jane’s late husband Kevin O’Driscoll. She lives in Tremore.

· Waterford is a pretty large city. We walked around for a while, bought some postcards and saw a few sights.

· When we left we headed for Tremore where Libby lives with her husband Paul and three kids. She has two sons.. Sam who is 19, Zach who is 18, and Eppie the youngest, she is about 12. Tremore is a tourist spot right on the sea. There is an amusement park which was closing down for the winter. From the beach we could see the bay with two ancient lighthouses on the left and three on the right. At the top of one of the lighthouses on the right was the Metal Man who points out the sea. Libby told me they built the lighthouses hundreds of years ago to warn the sailors of dangerous rocks in the bay which had already claimed the life and ships of many sailors. We took a ride along the coast over by the Metal man where I took some pictures. Then we went to Libby’s house. It was in a beautiful spot with a view of the sea. Libby went out to get us some of Tremore’s famous fish and chips. She said we couldn’t leave without having them. While she was out doing that we sat down and talked with her husband Paul and had a couple Coronas. He works for a company with its headquarters in Cambridge, Mass. The fish and chips were excellent. On the way home the sunset was amazing. I took a few pictures but we were in the car so they didn’t come out so well. Libby told us how lucky we were that the weather was good because like in New Hampshire it had rained pretty much the whole summer. When we got back to Carrick we decided to make it an early night and head to bed. I slept okay but woke up in the middle of the night because of a weird dream I was having. I was in some kind of junkyard for some reason in a car with some people when this American muscle car sped up to us and opened fire on us with a machine gun. I was the only one to survive. Pretty bizarre dream I’d say.

· Anyway, I’m going to enjoy the bus ride now and I’ll write again later after today’s adventures. I miss you all.

o -Cam