Day 8 : Counting sheep in Ireland

[Written by brian, editorial input from and approved by mary]

Before he became an embarrassing parody of self-indulgent 75 year-old stupidity, Mick Jagger sang “what a drag it is getting old….”. In short, Mary had a mild distress day in bed today, and Brian had a chance to (after two days of no work) rest and nap the day away (around a great lunch of course).

Great lunch = Salami & Chorizo with Red-Onion Jam and Mild Pesto

For today’s post the you get the Catch-up (not Ketchup) post of tidbits left-out of earlier posts.

[Written by mary, edited and published by brian]

Our routine has been go out during the day, return to the hotel late afternoon, sometimes take a nap, then head to the hotel pub where we’ll work on this blog, work our way through pints and to have a bite to eat. The Pub staff know us well and we always attract attention – the 2 of us pounding Guinness. Of course the locals can spot a tourist a mile away and just so a husband, wife and and ancient mum celebrating her 93rd birthday where, after a bit of watching us the husband gets himself a fresh pint and invites himself to join us for a bit. First off, he’s had a few already and when you add the midlands accent (for instance thick is pronounced tic), it was a job to understand him. As you would expect, the conversation was lively and grew to include all three of them. But this is why we stay away from the big cities, the locals in small towns and villages WILL start a conversation, especially when they know one is from the states. Really, they can’t wait to find our where one is from in the states. I must add, that the pub at the Shamrock Lodge, is warm, friendly, LOCALS eat, drink and make merry here nightly. Last week there were 3 funeral parties and at least two Hen parties.

Electricity in this country is a challenge for us Yanks, and considering we brought  1 camera, 2 laptops, 1 kindle, 1 tablet, 2 iPhones, and 2 iPods means a suitcase of charges, adaptors and cords. This picture is a great example of what can be needed to charge a battery.

We were charging everything this day, so to get this one done I needed to convert from UK 3-Prong->UK 2-Prong->USA 2 Prong->USB A->USB Micro (so as to charge the previously unmentioned GPS Device).

Brian took these pictures of the doors to homes within Athlone; really how does someone 6 feet tall deal with this daily. And just for perspective, I’m about 5”8′ (1 meter seventy-five or 1.75 in local speak)

We have been tracking our steps, every day, and the average is 3+ (~7,000 steps) miles per day, not bad for a couple of old farts (Phbbtht – speak for yo’self)

Different but same stores, it’s TK MAX here instead of TJ MAX….(interestingly, parent company is TJX Companies)

One of the highlights of our trips to this lovely island, are the Tayto crisps, (potato chips), they are NOT greasy at all, flavorful and we think (know) they’re better than their competition UK (aka colonialist oppressors) brand of Walkers. One can usually grab several flavors at the local Centra (kind of a 7-11 with hot food) or one of the many petrol stations, ………….so far we’ve only found salt and vinegar,, prawn cocktail, and loaded potato, and Irish spice?????, this is not looking promising, thankfully we still have time to search out some crisps, I NEED CRISPS…….FEED ME CRISPS (Feed Me Crisps Now)