Kinvara

Sunday, the 2nd, in Kinvarra, 7 am
We are in a B&B in this coastal town about 50km south of Galway. We left Clifden Saturday morning, picked the kids up in Galway, suffered through a two hour traffic jam to get through Galway and here we are. I will try to remember what happened to get us here. but I can tell you for sure that it has continued to rain every day at least some, the wettest July on record (I overheard). The kids are checked out mentally, they are road weary and disinterested. It appears all they want are better gaming units, and Mike wants his girlfriend.

Last Tuesday, the 28th, Dana and I did go into Roundstone, a very quaint and artsy town. The kids were dropped off at the Atlantic and presumably spent the day on the internet and throwing darts. We went to the Modhran factory, where they make the Irish drum, pronounced bowrawn. We were greeted with a 'How y'all doin?' by Tex, the proprietor, and he told us everything we needed to know about bodhrans. We bought one, and somebody will be making a lot of noise with this thing soon. Eventually it will look good hanging on the wall with the other instruments in the house. We bopped around town looking in all the shops, and got the scoop on all things local from the antiques dealer, a guy from Boston MA. Go Red Sox! We ate a very good seafood dinner at O'Dowds, and headed home.

Wednesday I filled you in on the last post.

Thursday, 8/30
We got a pretty early start to Galway, where we are dropping all three kids off at a hostel. It's about a 1.5 hour drive. On the way we stopped at Recess to check out Joyce's Crafts Shop, and the home of Connemara Marble. The owner is a sculptor of this soft stone, and the marble is beautiful. I traded him one of my last jade pieces for a piece of polished marble, and it turns out a couple of bigger stones we picked off the beach are also Connemara marble. The shop has a ton of woolen pieces, so we want to check it out further when we don't have the impatient easily bored crew in the car waiting.

It is race week in Galway, the biggest week of the year, and additionally Thursday is Ladies Day, so the place is crawling with ladies dressed to the nines, all looking very stylish with fancy hats and stilletto heels. Vavavavoom! We get the kids dropped at the hostel, which looks pretty cool, right near the heart of Galway. They will be in a dorm room with ten bunkbeds, just what they need. Dana and I go off exploring (shop-a-rama). Galway has a nice pedestrian area, the way SLO should do it, and the joint is jumping. There is a gritty side to the city, and we are told that after dark it can be dangerous, but what city isn't? Dana and I get out of there and take the coastal route home. We stop in Spiddal and have another great seafood meal, salmon, fish cakes, brown bread, great veg.

Friday, it rained all day, and we just hung around reading books all day. That night we were committed to getting to the music at J. Coneely's early enough to get a good seat, and we do, sitting right up front, sharing a table with an English couple from the Cotswolds. It was the same 2 guys that were there last Tuesday, Fergal Scahill and Mickey Martin. Mickey says Fergal is the Senior Fiddle Champion of Ireland, but he looks about 30. Mickey plays bazookie, a flattened mandolin, and sings, and Fergal also plays guitar. They are awesome, Fergal with the mad skills, and Mickey is very entertaining, great craic and a laugh like Amadeus. The joint is jumping, and people get up and show their jigging skills. Two gals are dancing a swing style right in front of us, and near the end of the night one of them goes looking for a partner. She is denied by her boyfriend and settles on me, and won't take no for an answer. This turns out to be the big finale song, and it is fast and long. I am in a sweat trying to keep up. The other girl joins in, Fergal is up on the bar tearing up the fiddle, Mickey is up on our table, the girls are spinning me around and toying with me, and of course we don't have a second of it recorded. It's probably on YouTube under 'Pathetic American Tourist gets schooled by Irish lassies!'

Saturday we pack up Clifden, check out, and head for Galway. We stop at Joyces' Crafts and pick up some gifts we've been meaning to get, go through Cong where 'The Quiet Man' was filmed, stop on the road for lunch, and enter Galway, where the worst traffic of the year has the city in a knot. It takes us 2 hours to drive 5 km through it, with the kids jumping in the car as we are stuck in traffic. Bad timing, I wish someone had warned us. Mike and Laura are asleep within one minute, and John is on the PC. They may have had too good a time in Galway. John says they were denied entry to the pubs because the bouncer said they were drunk, but my guess is he was unimpressed with the waif-like nature of their appearance. They got booze somewhere, because they sure seem hungover now. Once we get out of the traffic jam, it is not too far to Kinvara. Our B&B is very nice, The Meadow, but the view of ocean and castle they used to have has been blocked in the building boom that has gone on here. A lot of these houses are going begging now.

The kids go into town to get something to eat, while Dana and I engage our hosts, Mary and Denny Duffy, in some talk about the area. Mary is a retired nurse, and Denny is a retired policeman, so they know everyone in town, and Denny is an Irish history buff. Later we go into town to check it out and get a prescription refilled. Seems I shorted myself a few days. Of course, I forget the bottle, so I make the 1/2km jaunt a few more times, and then pay 35 euro ($50) for 15 pills, all they have. I pay $20 for 120 pills in the states. The big difference is these are brand-name, and I get generic at home. Ouch. We get some food, go back and take a short nap, and then Dana and I go check out hte session music downtown. The first bar has an accordion and bagpipe player, who are competent, but then they are joined by a fiddler that is learning, and a bazooki player that started yesterday and is clueless. So we leave there and find the other session is jamming, packed to the gills, and so loud with talking that we can't hear the music.

Today, we have started with a big Irish breakfast, eggs, yogurt, toast, 2 types of blood sausage, scotch ham, breakfast sausage, coffee, tea, cereal, and tomatoes. Criminy. The kids have mustered, it is 10:30, I am going to post this and then we will go touring the local caves, ring forts, dolmens and cairns.