We have eaten really well - most of our meals are overly abundant, most have been really good, only a few have been mundane. If you want vegetables and salads, go somewhere else. If you want lamb and beef and pork, here is good. Breakfast has been eggs, baked beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, and several kinds of cooked meats including sausages (bangers), black pudding (labeled a "superfood" at one hotel), their version of bacon, and sometimes haggis. In addition there are cereals both hot and cold, fruit both fresh and preserves, pastries, cold meats and cheeses - pretty much everything you could think of. This morning we had excellent gluten-free rolls, and bread with a brand new toaster. The cheddar cheese in Ireland has been spectacular and butter is abundant. At one breakfast, next to the honeycomb, was a bottle of whiskey with a pouring top. None of us could decide what part of breakfast you were supposed to add it to, although it was next to the oatmeal.
Lunches and dinners have been equally overloaded, and always come with dessert. We will all roll off the plane at home. I have had to consciously stop myself part way through, no matter how good, and limit dessert to just a few bites, but I am already planning many salads when I get home. We also spend a lot of time on the bus, so when we get a chance to walk we take it. I think today I might have actually balanced out some of those calories at the Giant's Causeway. This is a spectacular thing to see, and I actually forgot to keep track of time and had to be hunted down by our guide. Pictures can't do it justice, but here they are. Enlarge them as much as you can to get a better sense of it. The paths are narrow, sometimes steep, rocky, right at the edge of a sheer drop, and there are often no guard rails. You know in the US that would be a lawsuit waiting to happen.
See the "organ pipes" formation? I walked up there and beyond.
See those insanely steep steps? Didn't go up there.
This is the view from the organ pipes.
This is looking up at the organ pipes.
Looking down from where I stood in the next picture.
Looking down from just past the doorway in the picture above.
Looked, but didn't go.
The science nerd in me really enjoyed the geology and the birds and plants. I know there are legends and stories, but they're not as interesting as the real history.
After all that walking up and down hills for an hour, we went to Londonderry and spent an hour walking around the town. I tried to walk the one mile wall that has circled the inner city for 400 years, but my knee and feet were protesting after the Giant's Causeway. And yet I still walked for the rest of the time, just not up and down the wall. This is for you, Yarnworkers - I found a building covered in a giant crocheted yarnbomb:
My room last night was elegant but tiny.
Tonight's room is fine, but it's on the ground floor and I just realized that anyone can look in if the curtains aren't shut. The trees outside are full of rook's nests and loud with rooks, who are like uglier crows, and very noisy. Tonight's dinner was at the Clarion Hotel in Sligo, which has an unexpected Victorian facade. On the way home we looked it up and found that it used to be an insane asylum.
Tomorrow we head for Dublin for 3 days. Then we take Wow Air to Iceland, but it looks like they have much lower luggage and weight limits than Iceland Air, which does our other flights, so our tour guide is looking into that to see if we can get out of paying extra. I haven't used any local currency so far, just putting my few small purchases on a card, but I might get some Euros now. I would have had to use English pounds, Irish pounds, Euros, and Kroner by the end of the trip.
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