Castletownshend

As we came around a corner in the town of Castletownshend, we were on the top of a

hill that was very steep. Our directions told us that the castle is at the bottom of the hill. Sounds simple. As we proceeded down the hill we came to some trees that are in the middle of the road. Every town has something. Vegreville has a giant egg. Mundare has a sausage. Here they have two trees in the middle of the road. Maureen thinks we should turn but I think we can just fit around this obstruction.

We took the left side of the trees and proceeded with caution as we couldn’t really see what was on the other side.

Yea! We did not die.

More street going down the very steep hill and straight into the Castle. We were so happy. It had been a day filled with excitement. We parked the car for two days and went in to check in.

The Castle was built in 1750 and was impressive. Lots of stone with its own private beach. Inside was all dark wood, old paintings and antiques everywhere. The owner Ann gave us our room which looked over the back of the house but Maureen wanted to look at the bay in the front so she arranged that we got a different room. I am a quick settler so by the time she told me that we had a new room I had already unpacked my things and needed to repack. The new room was much larger with bigger beds and a spectacular view of the bay.

Ah! - Now this is Ireland, The many many changing colours of the hills and water. Out of the Car for a few days.

After an hour or two of just relaxing we decided to put on our raincoats, it was raining again, and walk to the little store, Donovan's, and pick up a few things. It was almost at the top of the street we just came down and had an interesting assortment of things. Being the only store in town it caters to everybody’s requirements. We found Tayto Chips, Tayto Popcorn, McVitie's Biuscuits (Maureen got very excited about these as she loves them and can't find them in Canada) and postcards. The evening had become very misty grey but it was not cold just damp.

Maureen found the phone booth out on the street and tried her card again but no luck there. It was very frustrating. She bought an Irish phone card that doesn’t seem to work in Irleand.

We went for dinner to Maryanne's the only restaurant in town. By the time we got to the restaurant there were already a few people there. We tried a Smithwick's beer which is. we found out. pronuounced 'smidicks'. a lovely beer if I do say so,

Teresa our waitress seemed a little quick with us at first but she turned out to be a sweetheart.

The owner of the Restarant had a son who was having a birthday party and Teresa was going to be doing the face painting at the party. She was trying to convince him to be spiderman or a puppy because those were the only faces she could do really well. she kept calling him 'Pet' and he kept looking at other designs. It was really rather funny .

Maureen had a steak the size of Texas and I had Roasted Vegetable with mushroom sauce pasta that was lovely and they brought the vegetable side dishes out in side dishes. The food was great. In the summer the population swells with tourists but there are only about 200 people in the town who stay year round so everyone here knows everyone else. Very friendly town. We were so full we could not eat dessert so decided we would come back the next day and only have dessert for lunch. on our waddle home we ran into a man who called the weather 'darty'. I believe that he was saying it was dirty weather, all misty rain like it was. by the time we got back to the castle it was raining a little harder so we stayed in and settled in very quickly for a good night sleep in our very comfortable beds. Maureen had the giant four poster bed that made her almost disappear, it seemed so large. I had one of the other two beds in the room which although not as large as Maureen's was just as comfortable.