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Writing Tuesday for Sunday and Monday. Sunday was a super quiet day — for me, anyway. I drove into Cahersiveen (the nearest town) and sat in a coffee shop to do the Sunday crossword puzzle.  A lovely man sat with me for a bit waiting for his ride (having given up his license recently). He thought my accent was Scottish. I'll take that over being recognized for a Boston accent!  He asked who I was supporting in the upcoming election "if that's okay to ask," and when I told him Biden, he said he had said something derogatory about the other candidate to someone in a café the day before and the guy nearly flipped over the table! I told him the subject is just as divisive at home.... 

Owen and Hannah let me know they were having lunch basically across the street so I joined them. Here they are, and here's Owen's fish and chips — the first of the trip.

Soccer was on TV at the Anchor Bar and the screen had this little beer pint icon on the bottom right. I remember seeing something like this in Italian bars, so I Googled it again and re-learned that the icon indicates that this pub has a special license to air the sports channel on cable. They have a different type of license for pubs. Funny — it's a wine glass icon in Italy!

As we left Anchor Bar we realized — due to some curios on a shelf, including a MAGA hat — that we can never give them another cent of our money. 

After lunch I went to another coffee shop which, at one point, become full of three groups of Americans — including me. Again, the subject of you-know-who came up and we were all wishing we could get Irish citizenship. One woman HAD it... Not sure how I passed so much time in coffee shops — oh, because I also posted a blog entry. 

Dinner was at a favorite of ours from last time — the bar at Glenbeigh Hotel. It's the place that has this bartender named Joe who also sometimes sits down at the piano and plays classic tunes for the out-of-towners, like Danny Boy. He didn't sit down this night, though. We sat in a huge banquette and among us we had: vegetable soup, salmon, roast beef, and fish and chips (Fred's first of the trip). 

And since I'm not sleeping solidly without waking, I took this photo of the sunset at 11pm that night (what I had thought was the sunrise a few nights ago).

We went from a quiet Sunday to a very busy Monday — although we didn't began the busy-ness until after lunch. First stop was the workhouse where Fred's ancestors spent three years before shipping off to the states. Some pics from those ruins: 

Okay, once and for all I'm Googling snails. Are there land snails and sea snails... and do the land snails crawl into these abandoned shells, or do they have them for themselves. And what are slugs? 

A land snail is any of the numerous species of snail that live on land, as opposed to sea snails and freshwater snails. Land snails have shells; those without shells are known as slugs. All mollusks grow  shells, but the shell of a slug is reduced to an internal plate, a series of granules, or is completely absent. 

Next stop was a cemetery where I took only two pics since I'd been there before. 

Orange lichen!

Sweet tiny little fern. I'm going to try to grow some at home with the spores from the backs of the fronds. 

Next we went to see two ring forts — another repeat for Fred and me, but always interesting. This time there was a man with a little black lamb in the parking lot. We pulled in and Owen said, "That guy is feeding something with a bottle in the back of his van!"  So, naturally, when we got out of the car we made a beeline for the van to find the sweetest little lamb, which he placed in Hannah's arms. This was when she remembered:  She and Owen had been warned to avoid the guy with the lamb at the ring fort because he wants money.  We decided to embrace it (literally) since we were already invested (also literally) and each took turns. I had a twenty, a ten, and a couple of coins in my wallet, which was lucky because who has cash???  As I fumbled to see if the ten was indeed a ten, he grabbed it. Had it been a five, I would have given him the five. When I accidentally dropped the coins, he asked me for them, twice. Sadly, this experience left a bit of a bitter taste in our mouths, but I don't think any of us regretted it!

He takes a lousy picture, too, the lamb profiteer. 

When we arrived at the ring fort there was a weird group of teenagers chanting in a circle, within a circular wall, inside the ring fort.  Possibly some kind of Bible camp or something, but we really don't know. They spoke a language we couldn't pinpoint, but it might have been Irish. 

 

Next up, a castle. 

Clam poop?

Valentia Island was next, just off the coast of Port Magee. It's considered one of the most westerly points of Ireland and it was here the first transatlantic telegraph was received. Valentia has some of the earliest signs of verterbrate life on land, and Ireland's first walrus was spotted here!

It also has a pub called Boston's  :)  Sadly, the bar maid had no idea why....

And a couple of other sites:

Jellyfish!

This poster was intriguing. Bee beds — the poster for which seems to imply some kind of massage with bees involved. So, Google, here I come!  Wow, that's what it is. Rather than paraphrase what I learned, I encourage you to visit the site:

https://valentiaisland.ie/business/beebeds/    I might have to try this out!

Our final stop was a seaside restaurant called Driftwood, which we had anticipated would be a sort of fish and chips clam-shack-type joint. Au contraire.

A super modern, minimalistic building with floor-to-ceiling windows.

The view from behind the restaurant. 

The food and atmosphere were A+ but the service was lacking. We felt a bit second-class. Owen's "special dipping sauce" that was described with his dish was MIA. Our water ran out and stayed run out. Same with the other beverages. A self-absorbed pair of British couples had a pre-dinner glass of wine in some comfortable chairs near us. Literally, I don't know how they didn't trip as they walked to their tables because their noses were SO far tilted UP. Yuck.

Until tomorrow!