country roads, and tiny towns

2912

a late morning, with the awesome guesthouse breakfast, and then we made our way to the airport to grab our car. of coarse that whole process took too long, rental car agencies like the DMV are places in the universe where the borders between our realm and HELL seems to thin. anyways we got our compact, diesel, right hand drive, manual transmission car, and started our journey.

i navigated while my pops drove. this route we didnt stop off anywhere to see stuff, we drove a rather slow and meandering route, much of it on 2 lane blacktop (though by with, in US standards it would be more like 1 lane with shoulders). at one point we got kinda lost, but its Ireland, and tiny, so we just continued till we hit a bigger road that actually appeared on the map.

we got to Tullamore (a very small town in the middle of Ireland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullamore ) in the mid afternoon, unfortunately the Tullamore DEW experience (fancy giftshop and tiny museum thing) was closed, until the 7th, which is kinda lame, cause we are still in Ireland, just not in Tullamore.

anyways, the biggest part of the day was the drunk Irishman we ran into, my dad an i had thai food, and then went to a bar about 250m from our hotel. the place was old and characterful, full of locals, and my pops n i sat next to an Irish guy who noting our accent, asked if we were in country for the football game, and from there we ent up talking to him a bunch.

first off this guy seemed real drunk when we started talking, and despite his having another 4 Guinness over the course of our conversation, he didnt get particularly more drunk, my dad claims its because "Guinness makes you as drunk as you wanna be" anyways, i had 2 glasses of Tullamore dew (and a Guinness), ive had it before, but i dont remember much, i notice now, with a deeper repertoire to draw from, that Tullamore is alot sweeter than the Irish Whiskeys ive had, it was aright, i wouldnt say any better or worse than the Jameson or Powers i usually have, but different.

anyways talking to this guy was fun, we talked about all kinds of stuff, how Ireland got to the economic state it is in now (the same as the US, basically predatory loans and a mortgage crises) his job (insurance salesmen) and the differences between the US and Ireland, and because of his drunkness we went over stuff a few times, but it was entertaining.

after this we went back to our hotel, i farted around on the internet, and went to sleep, to rest up for the "day of driving" the next day.