An Daingean

Just back from a break in the Gaeltacht (An Daingean to be precise) where I had a great touristy type of fun with friends of mine and the one closest to my heart. Also had the misfortune of falling and spraining my ankle.
We spent a good few days on the Arthur as well (more or less just me that drinks the goodnness and what fine goodnness there is down there)

Started off by taking the short drive from Dingle (Daingean) to Conor Pass (An Chonair), where Pete and Claire could hardly believe the views (truly stunning) and the wind up there that morning would have given anyone with a hangover a extremely fresh head and great breath of fresh air.

Then on we decided to drive the Slea head drive, if you havent been down there before I would highly reccommend it. Passing out Paidi O'Se's pub in Ventry (Ceann Tra) and visiting the beach, perfect for an afternoon stroll and admire the wonderful Kerry scenery. Out of Ventry and on up towards Slea head, when you enter a totally different climate to that of the one found in Dingle. We visited the pre-historic forts and the famine house (with accompanying muppets - see photo below -  to add effect to the authencity of it all), also there were bee hive huts and Pats house.

We ventured on passing out some Holy statues and finding our way down to one of the nicest beaches in the country, Thank God for the good weather. There are actually two very nice beaches down wee roads that you wouldnt actually think of driving down, but we were pleasantly surprised. Queue writing in the sand and getting sand in our shoes and god knows where else, attempting photo's where we were trying to fly with quite funny results (scoots off to find a photo)

Back to Dingle after all that fun and excitement, park the car up and take a leisurely stroll down to see the sharks in the Aquarium, and saying hello to Fungie (the statue at least) on the way. The aquarium is reasonably priced too, and you get to see a wide variety and range of fish/marine life, such as the star of Finding Nemo, stars of Piranha 3D (only kidding, but there are piranhas there, along with Sharks, some Rays and a tortoise/turtle!!!

So more or less thats all the touristy things to do, on our way back however we did stop off in Foxy Johns for two pints before going home for a bit of dinner, cooked by the wonderful Peg!!

A short one

Just seen that Things I ate's has it's first follower - thanks Lynchie! Also the honour of being the first to leave a comment also goes to Lynchie.

Dont think I have ever met Lynchie, but we could have met at many of the Munster matches we have both attended, maybe this year I will be lucky enough?

Munster Abu!!

G-G-Galway

Havent posted in a lil while, would say sorry but as of yet - no followers, which I suppose is okay for now.

I was away the last two days in Galway, a lovely Irish town on the west coast of Ireland. Its such a different town/city compared to my native city Limerick. There just seems to be a great buzz about the place, that one would be hard to find in any other part of Ireland.

Stayed at the Clayton Hotel, just opposite the famous Galway Racecourse located at Ballybrit. Got a great deal, and stayed on the exclusive fourth floor in an executive suite. Had our own living area, with this wall placed in the middle of the room, it was there to break the room up between bed and living area, the nice feature it had was a mirror/television that would rotate, so you could watch the TV in bed or else look at yourself in the mirror, whatever takes your fancy. Seeing as I am a TV head I opted for the former. Bed was a huge king size bed, and was extremely comfortable. Bathroom was something special, it had a large built in shower, that was walk in, and a separate bath. My stay also included fully inclusive breakfast which was out of this world, both in quantity and quality, which was handy as we had planned to go to the beautiful Kylemore abbey and we did, including a slight detour (thank you garmin) but eventually arrived in Kylemore. €12 isnt a bad price at all, except my girlfriend was a little disappointed with the amount that we could see in the actual castle, basically three rooms  which was a bit of a let down. The Neo-Gothic church is always quite good having been recently restored. Also there is a walled garden, which is just something you have to see, the lovely smell of turf coming from the Bothy and head gardeners house is lovely (although one of the visitors close by didnt enjoy it as much as us). There were herbs and veg, and fruit, as well as one of the longest flower borders in Ireland. Apart from the amazing scenery, that is all to do there ( I would have uploaded photo's but havent gotten around to that yet) but it was a really enjoyable day in lovely fine Irish autumn sunny weather.

On Wednesday night we dined in Fast Freddys, an Italian type diner, I had the Stromboli pizza, which was absolutely amazing, with baileys cheesecake for dessert. The other half had a Mexican pizza, with sweet chilli sauce, jalapeno's and chicken, was equally as good as mine, infact we would have both swapped if we wanted to. She had the banoffee for dessert, which was freshly made and equally delicious. After dinner, we headed for a drink in the Front door, and then home.

Thursday night, and we dined in Martine's just two or three doors down from Fast Freddy's on Quay st. where a large percentage of the restaurants in Galway are. It was also simply to die for food. I had a starter of chicken goujons with salad, while Peg had thai mussels in a lemongrass sauce. For mains, I had the lasagne with garlic bread and homemade hand cut chips. Peg had fillet steak skewers which were nice, but not as nice as my dish. For dessert, we had nothing, shock horror, we couldnt decide on one not to mind two! So we headed to Fox's porterhouse (recommended by one of the girls in Martine's) had two mojito's while Peg had two Cosmo's, and they were as good as we were told, perfect way to round off dinner. From there we decided to chance going to Halo (unfortunately for us, it was closed) so we headed to CP's where as was told to me last week would make you feel rather old and full of kiddies! Two drinks later and we were gone, and decided to head back to the front door again. It was great, good music, great drink and great company as we got talking to a few locals and we had a great night there.

Today, Friday we didnt make it up for breakfast and had to check out at 12, but I think we needed the lie in. We decided we would head to the city for a while, to do a bit of retail therapy (although Peg certainly filled both our quota's haha) and at this stage we were hangin for a bit of food, and Peg had said she wanted to visit McDonaghs (Quay St.) who also won an award for best casual dining in Connacht. Past customers have been John Locke from Lost and Gerry Adams! They must have known the place was good, because the fish and chip were unreal! Had a portion of curry and mushy pea's too - simply nothing like it, and the place must have been the busiest in the whole of Galway.

If whoever reads this, then I hope you havent been let down and it hasnt been too disjointed, enjoy your weekend.

Peace out,
McLove

Sla's

So got home last night, sat on the couch, and said to my folks (my dad in particular) that I was interested in taking up golf (i had previously played as a junior, but had no patience and really didnt practice/play that much) and having been watching the USPGA at the time, i thought hey I might say I am thinking about buying a set of clubs. So the three of us there talking about golf and my mom says her friend plays golf now and loves it. So my father says to come out next time and have a round of golf using his clubs of course.
This is where it gets interesting or not, I think the reason I never really got into golf was the scoring system. I know about stroke play, thats easy, you shoot a 3 on a par 4 and you go one under - simples, but I could never really understand how the stableford scoring worked, with all the indexes etc etc. I sort of had it figured out but then again i didnt, I was getting some parts of it, but the complexity of it all was too much.

Well this is how I think it works, all holes are indexed 1-18 in terms of difficulty and whatever handicap you play off means you get a shot or shots on a hole, lets say i have a handicap of 25, that would mean I would have 2 shots on holes 1-7 and 1 shot on each remaining hole after (that much I know is right) - what I dont get is the scoring here after - even thinking about it now is making my stomach turn and my brain hurt. I think he should write the rest of it down or if someone out there reads this and can possibly explain it better to me??

So after all that, my stomach is rumbling, of course I havent eaten since that subway yesterday at about 2ish, we talk about pizza, some humming and hawing mostly from me because I am not really sure I want pizza and my folks like papa johns, but there is something quite not right about there tomato sauce (its like cleaning product or how I would imagine that tastes, but sometimes you think you know the taste from the smell, maybe you dont, but I do), then pizza hut is mentioned, and how they got a pizza before and it was smelly?!? God only knows what that means. So i think it over, go to the kitchen, see if i can find something there to eat - plenty of food but nothing I want. So go back in and suggest Sla's (Slatterys Chipper), hmm some battered sausages and chips, its unanimous, and then my dad goes see if they have cod.

I head up to chipper and no cod, said I would have to wait 10 mins or so, belly rumbling, no I will just go with the battered sausages and chips, with salt and vinegar. Hmm so good, bring 'em home, and as if there isnt enough salt on them, I sprinkle some aromat seasoning (the yellow one) on them, just poirfect. Wash it down with a few cans of coors light and bob's your uncle

Breakfast

I really went all out today...not! Was just the usual thing.

I ate my bran flakes, had no tea, no toast, not even my usual dan-one drink actimel or something, (no wait I remembered it) Vittel, no Vitality!

That didnt keep me going very long, so I had to eat something more. So I went to Chawkes ( a service station) close to where I work and got myself a portion of potato cubes and two sausages. The cubes can tend to get cold very quickly and I didnt eat them fast enough so had to throw some in the bin because they are not very nice when cold (unless you are drinking/drunk/hungover) however I would avoid eating cold ones when hungover as you might feel much worse than you do.

For lunch, after watching my colleague Darragh eating a subway (he normally only eats Subway melt, I told him to try something new and to my surprise he did and actually liked it, he got my favourite the Italian BMT), I however went for his favourite (cheese and toasted of course) with some lettuce and green peppers and southwest sauce. I have tried sweet onion sauce (my neighbour (a subway owner) advised me to try it) and it is actually quite nice and would nearly prefer it to sw sauce now. Throw in the meal deal and I had the rainbow cookie with the Red Oasis drink.

Not sure if I will have dinner yet - if I do though, you can be sure I will be ate-ing it!