Ireland - Day 6

Ireland – Day 6 – April 15^th

We started our day down in the little town where our cottages are, Crawsfordsburn. It is a picture from a post card. Large white buildings with thatched roofs and very short doorways. They have very interesting doors here in Ireland, they have a full wooden door and then in front of it a half door that I have been told is to keep the children inside but still let air and light in. I think it is to keep sheep out.

We visited the only traditional crafts store we have been in so far and we all went a little crazy. I got a local hand woven coat, my beloved got a couple of sweaters and we got a bunch of other stuff for some people and the rest of them did not do too badly either.

We had lunch in the Crawsfordsburn Inn. It was a lovely place with lots of dark paneling and glass. It was a combination of old and new. Some of it worked, like the ladies room with the tempered glass stalls and super duper hand dryer. Some of it did not, like the weird 60's light fixture in the dining room we were in. The food was very good and there was a lot of it, which caused us to wonder if Ireland would be far behind the US in the obesity crisis.

Then we went off to meet some new friends, we are meeting them everywhere it seems. There was Harry, Patches, Figaro and Rosie. You might be thinking right about now that those are strange names for people we met in a pub, you would be correct. We met them at an equestian center where Chip and MOC went to ride. The place gave riding lessons and boarded horses and they boarded a lot of horses from what I could see. I was talking to a young girl that was taking care of her horse. The horse was eight years old and in its previous life she had been a race horse. Now she was being retrained to be a riding horse. The young girl had been riding since she was about eight, she was a tiny little thing and the horse was not. I think she told me it was 16.2 hands and it seemed so powerful. I watched another little girl get nipped by her horse and another bring organic oats for hers. I thought of my friend Bead Chick and her family and thought they would love to live here.

Chip and MOC took a ride thru the fields being led by two young girls and it was a dream come true for MOC and we were glad we could be part of it.

Then we went to explore downtown Bangor which has a lovely harbor and lots of pubs. We visited two of them the Rabbit Hole and Jenny Watts. The Rabbit Hole was an interesting place, there was a little girl dancing in the middle of the pub while her auntie snapped photos of her. I ran into a young girl that had hurt her leg running down the street. From what I don't know, but since she was from somewhere else I thought well, that is going to throw a damper on your holiday, not to mention the people with you that right now are ok with walking very slowly with you, but might not be in a couple of days. It had great sayings painted on all the surfaces, I enjoyed it very much.

Then we were off the Jenny Watts, poor Jenny caught up in the Orange uprising and went to hide in a cave near the ocean and was drowned by the incoming tide. The bar keep was fun, the only place she had ever been in the states was the birthplace of moi! Oh the people that travel to discover me.

We had dessert at this pub and I had something called Pavlova, which I think sounds like a virus, but was like a baked Alaska with strawberries. My beloved had something called Banafee, which is a bananna toffee pie like thing. Chip and MOC had apple crumble wih ice cream.

All in all a good day.