24.06-25.06.Dubrovnik, next two days.Swimming.Talks.The other Harbor in Dubrovnik.

24.06 Tuesday began with rain

I didn't sleep well Monday night and was woken up by some serious rain. Despite (or because of) this, the view from the window was pretty great:




For lunch, the group I was with grabbed some sandwiches (again) from a small shop and sat on the pier from Game of Thrones (Seriously. Remember this scene? Or this?) . Afterwards, we went for a swim around the corner (really, over a hill and back down) from the first cove, which was much nicer and cleaner, although the water felt cooler. Probably because it was much warmer and sunnier.

Same pier where we ate lunch, but on the next day:


After the talks, we went back to the old city. We ate (just outside the walls) at the same place as Monday evening,  ,,the Terrace". It had a great view and the food was pretty good. I had one of the daily specials, the ravioli with truffles as well as an order of grilled veggies. Our experience has been that most things don't come with veggies, but ordering them on the side for another 2.5-3 euros is always an option.

Some of us wanted to go into the old city proper afterwards to walk around. Here's a totally normal street in the old city:



and a woman with wings, swooping around the main street (she probably was advertising the Midsummer Night's Dream which was playing at the far end of the street)



On the next day (Wednesday), there'd be a proper tour of the old city. We weren't sure if we would go, especially since it was supposed to rain the next two days. So, we did our own little mini-tour of the side streets and alleys of the old city.



I saw this sign and thought, well, gotta check it out:



The view was reached through a whole/doorway in the city wall. Here are two pictures of the "most beautiful view":





Another normal (narrower) street, from near the south wall:



This building dates from 1664:



You have to pay around 100 Kun (btwn 7.5 and 10 euro) to clamber around the fortifications properly. We didn't really have that much daylight left, so left it for another day and just peaked through a fence:



We rounded a corner, and saw a great view of the other side of the city and its defenses, towards the north:



Outside of the old city, to the east, is a small harbor. Very pretty during dusk:








Dubrovnik from the Pier:
 




We saw some other people swimming, but I personally wasn't interested in swimming right there:




From the pier, we could see a cruise ship, which was probably headed to the other harbor in the west:




25.06 Wednesday and the other harbor of Dubrovnik. 

On Wednesday, there were only two talks (well, two talk time-slots) and then we had the rest of the day free. I discussed some math with people for a while and later did a very small amount of walking around. My friend had mentioned some not-so-touristy restaurants on the west side of everything, by the bus station (and the other harbor), so I decided to go for dinner over there.

Heading there, one could see more mountains in the distance:



We managed to avoid all stairs going there, and just walked down a gentle hill. Success!

First view of the other harbor:




After we ate, more harbor, with some sunset light awesomeness:





The restaurant we picked is called ,,Amfora". Tasty tasty, and the waitstaff was a lot more laid back than the pushy super-used-to-throngs-of-tourists guys around the old city. Similar prices, but the food quality was higher. I had the risotto, which had the correct rice and lots of basil and parmesan. Delicious.

There are stray cats all over Dubrovnik. They seem to be both rather clever and sweet. This one, as I approached and hauled out my camera, scampered up on the scooter and then mewed at me as I pointed the camera at it, like he wanted payment for doing what he was supposed to. I didn't throw him any food (to be fair, I had none on me).

22.06 --23.06 Dubrovnik Croatia, arrival. First 2 days.

Auf Deutsch.

I'm in Croatia now, for a conference which runs from 23rd through the 27th of June. It's in honor of the 60th Birthday of the  founder of my sub-area of Topology (Goodwillie).  I'm happy to see my colleagues again -- and the sun as well :) .
==========
Arrival -- day 1. 

Croatia -- from the plane, everything seemed very hilly (really, mountainous), sunny and beautiful. I'm here for a conference, and immediately had the feeling that I should come back to visit again, when I really have enough time to enjoy the place.




After we landed, we took the shuttle (not the public bus, which we didn't see) into the city -- it took maybe 20 or 30 minutes. It was a beautiful ride along the adriatic coast.



What I had not understood when booking a hotel, was that its location necessitated schlepping my 16kg suitcase up ~100 stairs -- I chose to hold it over my head, and cursed not wearing my ankle brace.

Well, I guess I'll get in shape this way.

When looking up the ``street", what you see:



And here's the view from half-way down:



I sent an SMS to a friend who's also here, so we could meet up and find some dinner. We opted for the old city ---which is ``close" as the crow flies, and a little less close when you take into account the stairs. We ate at the ``favorite" restaurant of our host, which was not that great.

Here's a picture of the main street of the old city (it's about 300m long):


 We discovered that the old city *also* has a lot of big staircases (thankfully, the restaurant-street was only up about 5 or so steps) :





After eating, we took some time to go to the/a harbor (the one on the east end of the city), had some ice cream and looked around.



There was a fake submarine:





Outside of, but near to the old city:


A nice vantage point, looking south-east ish:



2nd Day (First Day of the Conference)

On the second day in Dubrobnik started the conference. For breakfast, we ate in a restaurant which is adjacent to the conference center (it's called "Sesame"). Good coffee, and I could get a totally normal breakfast of müsli, yogurt and fruit.

We had sandwiches from the "Sandvich Stand" for lunch and sat on the pier (which was in Game of Thrones):




While we were sitting there, one of the other people mentioned that on a nearby island they saw an octopus along the coast. This was said while we were watching little crabs scuttling around an outcropping.

Afterwards, we walked up a hill towards a fortress and looked out over the city:




Looking in the other direction, we saw a cove where one could go swimming (which also showed up in Game of Thrones). Later that evening I even went swimming there:




The water was amazingly clear, which you can kind of see in this picture:




In the city, we saw a lot of pretty little side streets (which is called an "Ulica" in Croatian):

After lunch and after another lecture, I gave my own talk. I felt it went quite well :).
I swam later (after all the talks were over and after dinner), sort of in celebration. The water was a bit cold, but sort of "marbled" warm-cool and the saltiness was nice (and different from just pool swimming).

[Next: more pictures, more of everything!]

2014.02.21--24. Galway-area.Day 2.Connemara.

A bit from "The Irish Sketchbook" William Makepeace Thackery (1843) on Connemara:

``The Clifden car, which carries the Dublin letters into the heart of Connemara, conducts the passenger over one of the most wild and beautiful districts that it is ever the fortune of a traveller to examine; and I could not help thinking, as we passed through it, at how much pains and expense honest English cockneys are to go and look after natural beauties far inferior, in countries which, though more distant, are not a whit more strange than this one. "

================================

Weather forecast for the day: rain, wind, rain. Rinse, wash, repeat.  We'd brought rain pants, which were the perfect remedy to this day.

We wanted to do a tour, decided on Connemara and Cong, from the Galway tour company, in part because it seemed like between that and the Cliffs of Moher, the Connemara and Cong tour would involve less time getting soaking wet in the rain. I was also bummed out that it was the wrong season to hope to catch sight of any puffins at the Cliffs of Moher. (Here's a page on all the birds you can see there). 

There didn't seem to be any small-bus tours (like the one we took in Dublin to Co. Wicklow), so we were stuck on a giant monster-sized bus. Our tour guide was named Michael, and he kept up a pleasant monolog about the various sights and passed on snippets of Irish history. 

We passed by this traditional Irish house. They were usually 2 rooms: a communal room and sleeping room. There might be a loft for the daughters to sleep together in. Supposedly, a woman who stayed with her family, unmarried (sleeping up on that loft), was said to have been "left on the shelf" (and that being the source of that saying):

thatched cottage

There's a patter along the thatch at the top. These vary between thatchers, works as a kind of "signature".

Our tour guide assured us that there's nothing Irish (men) love more than potatoes (food-wise?). He said, the surest way to an Irish man's heart is to invite him over for dinner and make him a giant pot of potatoes. The way to lose him is to later invite him over for dinner (again) but only make salad.

Connemara is a beautiful, boggy region, made more beautiful by the drizzle and clouds.
A lot of the trip was just shuffling quickly out of the bus, taking a picture or two, and scurrying back on to avoid the drizzle and cold.  The roads were well-maintained, but they are "bog roads" -- constantly sinking, and generally bumpy. I got motion-sick, and this lasted most of the day, even through the two-hour break at Kylemore.

beautiful Connemara

I think these colors are amazing. Yellows and reds and blacks and greys of the water.

more beautiful bog scenery

In the next picture, you can see what it looks like when people have been actively digging out peat (to use to burn in fires): 

The next two pictures show in the water, mussel farms. They are not eaten by the Irish (or so said Michael), just tourists. They ate a lot of them (to survive) during the famine, and removing them from the water was outlawed afterwards by cranky landowners:

I assume the buouys mark where you pick up the whatever-it-is in which the mussels are growing

One of the big attractions on this tour was the Kylemore Castle/Abbey.

A short history: 
Englishman (Mitchell Henry) goes to Connemara-region for his honeymoon. Loves it. Later, inherits a bunch of money. Comes back (mid-famine) to build his dream estate to have his wife (and future) kids in. The neighborhood loves him, as he brings money and employment.

They go on a trip later with their kids, travel around, go to Egypt. She gets some illness you wouldn't die of these days, and dies. He's heartbroken, comes back, builds a chapel in her memory and a small mausoleum. They had her embalmed in Egypt so that her corpse would survive the trip being shipped back to Ireland.

Later, he sells the place. To the Duke and Duchess of Manchester. They think they King's going to be their guest, so they make a lot of "improvements" to the place (tearing out some beautiful arches and other nice things to "modernize"). The Duke's got a gambling problem. Legend says he lost the castle in a game of cards or dice. They had to move out.

Then it sort of lapsed into disrepair.

Time goes by. A bunch of nuns (there was a nunnery in Ypres, Belgium that had a girl's school and was a popular place to send Irish girls with some money away for schooling) were looking around for a new place to live after their previous home was blown up in WWI. Found the castle, thought it was awesome, bought it.  Started up a school eventually to pay the mortgage.

Closed the school down around 2007. Combo of not enough nuns anymore and also too many regulations meaning they'd have to seriously renovate (and destroy parts of) the place to make it wheelchair-friendly and up to snuff with respect to the current fire code.

Result: now a chunk of the place is actually open to tourism (as it's no longer a school), and the rest is where the remaining nuns live and, apparently, make chocolates to sell in the shop at the visitor center.

Here's the view as we pulled into the parking area (yes, I saturated the photo a bit, but it really is oddly green. It's the moss, mainly):

First view of Kylemore Castle/Abbey:

Kylemore Abbey/Castle

Somehow the land is both rocky and boggy; Kylemore castle had to be built into/on/around the rock, since it's so dense that even blasting with dynamite wouldn't clear it. It's hard to tell by looking at it, I think, but it is on several levels as a result.

View across the lake:

The chapel built to honor the wife of Mitchell Henry:

again, that is not grass on the ground, that's moss.

As you can clearly see, moss grows all the way around the tree, so not just on the north side:

The next stop on the trip was a Friary (Ross Errilly Friary)  built in 1351 by Franciscans. It was pretty big, had had two stories (the floor and roof were timber, and have not survived), and housed, they think, roughly 200 people.  Here is an aerial view to give you a sense of size. From a blog piece of someone who is a (recreational?) historian from the area.

This bit (taken from Wikipedia) is something our tour guide commented on as well:

"Life at Ross Errilly was disrupted by the English Reformation. The Franciscans had loudly opposed King Henry VIII's break with Rome, which would prove costly after the schism. In 1538, English authorities imprisoned two hundred of the monks and banished or killed an indeterminate number of others. The rest of the Franciscans' history at Ross Errilly would be marked by repeated evictions and other persecutions."

[Also just learned that as a consequence of ``Glorious Revolution", there was an act (the Popery Act of 1698) that effectively put a bounty on Catholic Clergy]

clearly, Irish-Gaelic went with "Monastery" (Mainistir) rather than "Friary".

Ross Errilly Friary

looking into a courtyard

Old-friary-become sheep-grazing spot. The smell was...earthy.

We also stopped in Cong, a small town whose main claim to fame seems to be some film was filmed there.  Wikipedia to the rescue:

``Cong was the filming location for John Ford's 1952 Oscar-winning film, The Quiet Man, featuring John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara and Barry Fitzgerald. Much of the movie was filmed on the grounds of Ashford Castle. The town and castle area remain little changed since 1952, and Cong's connection with the movie make it a tourist attraction. (The movie is still celebrated by the local "Quiet Man Fan Club")."

Someone else's picture of the requisite ``Quiet Man" statue.

It also seemed a scant distance from being completely flooded -- river flowing super-high, to just below the containing walls, no clearance under bridges. It was bad enough that the public toilets seemed to no longer be able to work (I think the water table was too high).  

We also stopped at this fairy tree. You tie something to it -- when you get married, when you want a kid, when you have a kid. When the kid gets sick and you want it to get better. When it gets better.  For luck. For thanks.

Fairy Tree!

Getting back in to Galway, we debated various things -- including deciding to skip the Cliffs of Moher the next day-- and then headed back in to town proper for a late dinner. Lots of wandering around, in the rain. We settled in to the Pie Maker for dinner.  I had sausage and veal gravy pie (came with mashed potatoes and mushy peas) with ginger beer. Lovely. 

We walked around afterwards looking for live music. Was reminded of the bar past the "red light district" known for trad stuff. We walked out that way and re-found it. The Crane Bar.

The Crane Bar, during the day 

There were, after about an hour, 20 or so musicians all jamming, jigs, reels, what have you. 5 or so pipes, an irish bagpipe, a few concertinas, and 5 or 6 fiddles. Quite lovely.  Outside of the (other) tourists and their flashes on their cameras. 

================================

Parting thoughts on Galway, Dublin and (Republic of) Ireland (I still have one more post on Northern Ireland/Belfast in this trip): 

Our tour guide, Damien, to Co. Wicklow had said that people who come to Ireland, visit Ireland, on average, 3 times in their lives. I can totally see this. It is a lovely country with great scenery and an interesting history.  

One impression I had in Dublin was there was no real "Famine" museum. Sure, there were statues (and in Galway, a park and monument), but I expected more (apparently you can find bits and pieces in one of the museums we didn't visit, as well as the former-jail in Dublin, in the context of a precursor to the (eventually) successful succession movement).

I can see how it's still a bit touchy -- it wasn't exactly a famine, inasmuch as food was still being produced and (forcibly) exported, due to the British landowners.  

Malone. … My father died of starvation in Ireland in the black ’47. Maybe you heard of it?
Violet. The Famine!
Malone (with smouldering passion) No, the Starvation. When a country is full of food, and exporting it, there can be no famine. Me father was starved dead; and I was starved out to America in me mother’s arms. English rule drove me and mine out of Ireland . …
---George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903) (found cited here)

Here's some stuff from the internet, for the curious:

• a famine timeline. 
• a very good University College Cork page, including various excerpts of relevant texts (incl. primary and secondary sources):

• ``Excess deaths, that is, deaths over and above the normal rate, for 1846–51 are reckoned at between a million and a million and a half. The population declined by 2,225,000 in the period 1845–51 from a probable high of 8,200,000."

• a blog talking about the type of potato being grown then (and used as the main source of nutrition in Ireand).  Includes comment that the estimated pre-Famine daily intake of potatoes for a laborer was 10-14 pounds (4.5--6.35 kilos). 

I saw/heard the statistic that some 30 million people worldwide (or maybe just in the states?) claim Irish ancestry, as part of the mass emigration due to the Famine. There were a surprising (to me) number of shops and such advertising to help you with genealogical research, finding your family crest/seal/whatever. It felt very American to me, but it's really, I suppose, the other "end" of the American obsession with finding our roots -- Ireland lost a giant chunk of people, and not that long ago.
Also, for the curious, Ireland was neutral during WWII. I thought that was interesting. It makes a lot of sense, having freshly come from their own civil war. For Ireland in WWI and leading up to post-WWII, see this page at University College of Cork.

===


Next post -- Belfast/Northern Ireland (it will be a small-ish one, as I didn't take many photos). 

2014.02.21--24. Galway.Parts-1-and-3.

The first and last day in Galway (we were there only 3 days) were very light, so I'm grouping them together.  I don't think it changes the narrative too much.


=====

Friday: Dublin to Galway, walking around Galway.

We were up early enough to catch the 09:15 AM GoBus to Galway. There's at least one more bus that runs only between Galway and Dublin (citylink, I think), in addition to the (slower and more expensive Bus Eirann). Got in around noon, dropped our stuff at the B-n-B and headed back in to walk around. 

The Lighthouse B-n-B, Galway, Lough Atalia Road

Dublin is the biggest city in Ireland -- Galway might be second-biggest.
[Edit from Andrew: "The city has a population of about 70,000 and is either the third or fourth largest city in Ireland, depending on who's counting: Cork is about 2.5 times as big, and Limerick used to be bigger, but has fallen back in relative terms. "]

It's much more cozy, has a feel somewhere between preserved-and-quaint and college-town-ish. They have around 70 pubs, many quite interesting and with live music daily.

It's kind of hard to show with a picture, but the combination of lots-of-rain (causing floods in a good chunk of the country) and that this is (supposedly) the fastest flowing river in Europe made for some epic noise and roiling water:

behold, the river Corrib!

What looks to be a crossing bridge thing, completely under water:
[Edit, from Andrew: ``[R]elated to the fisheries service offices nearby. Possibly eel fishing facilities, or something to do with salmon - I'm afraid I don't know the details. It's not always submerged, but while there's a walkway part way, it's not a bridge.''] 

flooded thing in the Corrib

Here's someone else's recent video of said river.  Kind of "meh" quality, but it conveys the point.

There's also a body of water running parallel to it that seems like a kind of lock or runoff. Much calmer:

A nice house along this side-stream:

Random pictures of the town: 

random blue building

Clippy thinks you need -- a coffee, lunch, or cake.

turquoise door frames

We stopped for some snacks at a small store.  Outside, I was excited to see peat for sale: 

PEAT!

During the walk around town, we also went by the Galway Cathedral. Formerly a jail (Gaol), it supposedly still has the underground part of the cells (which is kind of creepy) and the rest was rebuilt into the church as it stands:

Galway Cathedral

bloody stained glass window

It had some lovely stained glass windows. I like how the first one  is in the shape of a flower:

turns out, it's hard to take pictures of stained glass

I am reasonably certain that most/all of the red in this second one is supposed to be blood.

JFK visited while it was under construction. Apparently he was pretty well loved in Ireland, and people felt like he did a lot to improve the reputation of Irish people worldwide. So, here's a mosaic of him in a side chapel of the cathedral:

JFK picture

We also walked through a mall which was built around a re-built old tower from, I think, the city's defenses. Kind of odd, tower completely enclosed in a mall. Here's the plaque:

part of the tower can be seen behind the plaque

Here's a bit on the history of the wall, from the mall website:

The walls built by the de Burgos in the 13th century to secure the town and its trade dominated the story of Galway for the next 500 years...The story of Galway city begins when Turlough O’Conor, king of Connacht, built a fort overlooking the ford at the mouth of the river Corrib at the beginning of the twelfth century. This fort was probably a timber structure, as there are repeated reports of it burning down. The O’Hallorans and O’Flahertys were allied to the O’Conor king and together they fought off Richard de Burgo and his army when the Norman knight first came to claim his grant of the lands of Connacht in 1230. De Burgo was back a few years later with a larger army and took control of the river crossing, building a castle to protect it. A town grew up around the castle and, despite continued aggression from the native Irish families and periodic burnings, the de Burgos continued to control the castle and the burgeoning town. A plaque supposedly erected over the west gate into the town bore the inscription ‘From the Ferocious O Flahertys O Lord deliver us’.

And here is someone else's attempt to take a picture of the thing.

We had dinner at the Quay ("key") Street kitchen. We walked through Tigh Neachtains, a pub that still has the traditional "snugs" -- little niches where women sat when they came to drink, with doors hiding them from the men in the pub.  Here's someone's review of the place. It was super duper packed, so we kept walking, and ducked into the Quays bar.

Our B-n-B hostess had described it like a church (crammed inside a bar), with people playing live music at the altar-area. I'd actually describe the location of the stage as being really more choir-loft (as you can see in this picture (due to someone else)). The altar-esque-area would be the location of one of the bar counters.  Here's another good picture, which shows where that main bar is.

As we walked in, it smelled heavenly, like someone had spilled a bottle of Scotch. It took me a minute to realize that this smell was coming from the cheery peat fire to the left of the entrance, in a cozy little fireplace. We walked down the stairs, by carved wooden arches and stained glass, then back up more stairs and behind the stage-area, into a sort of nook. We sat down and had some cider (Bulmers). Eventually, they started playing a Rugby game on the screen nearby, part of the 6 Nations games, Wales vs. France. I'd never seen Rugby before,  so it was interesting and also kind of hilarious. I enjoyed the move where everyone rushes to grab one teammate by their legs and through him up in the air to catch the ball. The scrum is weird.  I expect fewer injuries than American Football, as people have to be trained how to tackle "properly" for rugby, and there's also some sort of protective things people do once someone's down to guard them, forming kind of a human bridge or something around them.

Live music was the "Converse All Stars" after the Wales-France (Wales won)  game.  The sound system was awful, so we left early (it's not the kind of space where you need an amp, so it was terribly loud and distorted). 

===================
[Interlude:  Day 2 (Saturday) we went on a tour of Connemara and Cong. See next post.]
===================

Day 3 in Galway:  we walked to the Salthill Promenade.

I'd been motion sick during the tour on Saturday and wasn't really ready to sign up for another tour, especially in combination with general "meh" weather. So we opted to not do a tour Sunday and instead slept half the day. When we got up, we walked over to Salthill, along the ocean, touching on Claddagh and a park (Celia Griffin park) made in memory of the children who died of starvation during the famine. 

Spanish Arch, in Galway (I am unsure of the story here)

[Edit from Andrew (thanks for providing the background): ``The wall near the Spanish Arch is one of the few remnants of the city walls still out in the open and visible in a public space - the city museum beside where you were is quite new (under a decade) and the house attached to the wall is where it used to be housed. ...If you follow a straight line, jogging a little, you will reach that section inside the Eyre Square centre [the mall]....Spanish Arch and Spanish Parade are named after the fact that this was the main port area in town in the 1400s-1600s, when a lot of Spanish merchant vessels would stop in (including, it is said, one with Christopher Columbus, back when he was a mere sailor - you may have seen the memorial to him on the Spanish parade, donated by Genoa to mark the 500th anniversary of his transatlantic trip - though it's been moved from it's original location, so the arrows and directions are off)."] 

view of Galway, by Claddagh

I really liked the clouds and ocean in the next pic. It belied the smell--- the causeway on the left leads out to an island (well, I suppose, pseudo-island) on which is a sewage processing plant. 

view of ocean and clouds and causeway. 

The following is one of the famine memorials in the park: 

memorial

The following is also in the park. It's titled "starvation inquest"

The text of most of it is as follows (from the wikipedia page on Celia Griffin):

" An inquest was held on Thursday last, before Michael Perrin, Esq., D.C., at the Presentation Convent, on view of the body of Celia Griffin, a girl about six years of age, from the village of Corindulla, near Ross, in this county. It appeared in evidence that the poor creature had been reduced to extreme poverty and that the family to whom she belonged, eight in number, were in the same pitiful condition. She had been recommended to the Ladies of the Presentation, by Rev. George Usher, as a fit object for relief, and accordingly she and her two sisters received a daily breakfast at that excellent Institute. They met Mr Usher on the Rahoon road about a fortnight ago, but famine had so preyed upon her feeble constitution, that, on the morning of Wednesday, she was unable to taste food of any description – so that on the post mortem examination made by Doctor Staunton, there was not a particle found in her stomach."

"She with her father, mother, brothers, and sisters, came to Galway about six weeks ago, in the hope of obtaining some charitable relief, and during that period have been begging in the streets, and about the country. The parents of the deceased formerly resided on the estate ofThomas Martin, Esq, MP. When Doctor Staunton was called on he found deceased is a state of inanition, except an occasional convulsive action of the muscles, and her body might be said to be literally skin and bone – with all the appearance of starvation. She was so exhausted, as not to be able to use the food supplied to her. The Jury found that her death was caused for want of the common necessaries of life, before she received relief at the Presentation Convent."

view of Salthill, past the shore

Upper Salthill Street was a mixture of empty buildings and bustling businesses, although clustered -- successful places closer to the water. I'd read this, which made me want to go to O'Connor's famous pub. It had a sign saying it wasn't open again until 19:30, so we went looking for food.

We settled on the Galleon. They claimed to be "family-style", but the food was absolutely delicious, so that does not mean what it means in the States.  It was 16.50 for a starter/dessert and main. Ended up with duck spring rolls, stuffed chicken breast (still on the bone), mashed potatoes, mashed carrots, some broccoli, and banoffee pie. Yum.

fuck yeah, Banoffee pie.

With time afterwards to kill, went to "Oslo", home of Galway Bay Brewery. Had a half-pint of their chocolate milk stout, which was delicious. Was also pleased with their general vast selection. I was pretty tempted to try their alcoholic ginger beer.  Negatives -- The interior lacks character, is very open. It probably gets quite loud. 

Having killed enough time, we wandered over to "O'Connor's famous pub", which was quirky, as described, and sat right next to the (wood) fire and split a cider.  Eventually headed back, looking for music. Decided the Quays were too loud. Ended up at Taafe's, also next to a fireplace, listening to a live band. The bouncer could totally have been a former Rugby player. I was of the opinion that most of the bouncers were former Rugby players. :)

=========================


 Next post -- tour of Connemara and Cong! (beautiful scenery, and a castle-turned-abbey).