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(im writing this a good few days late, cause the internet sucked at our various hotels)
woke up and had a slightly better breakfast, this time it was a continental buffet, but cause no one ever goes to Tullamore, especially when the distillery is closed, they made the food round 8 when breakfast opened, and then we ate it at 915. so the fried eggs, with the yoke somewhere between sillyputty and and dried two part epoxy. there was also white and black pudding, but dont be confused by it being called pudding, cause its not pudding at all, by the time we ate it, it was much more like a hashbrown than any kind of pudding ive ever seen.
we had to leave early so as not to get a parking ticket, and we went to Kilbeggan, which is another town round there, nothing is really that far away in Ireland, for our first distillery tour.
thats outside, inside was kinda kewl, apparently they have been brewing for quite a while now, its been producing Kilbeggan whiskey since like the 1750s ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilbeggan_Distillery ). the parts we wandered through were, like the Guinness factory, not an actively operating distillery, though the modern Kilbeggan distillery was visible, we were wandering through the old distillery, with the big gears and pumps still turning by the 250 year old water wheel. the place was pretty cool, we wandered around by ourselves reading the pamphlet they handed out. it was all pretty standard distillery stuff. but it seems like the owner/operator was a really nice guy, the workers were allowed like a 2 shot a day allowance, on top of their salary, their sheeps/cows could graze on the distillery lands for some 5 pounds a year (which wasnt much at the time) he would sell them coal on credit for the winter months to warm their home, and everyone generally liked him. then again he was producing the whiskey, why wouldnt you like em?
we ent up infiltrating a group of other Americans over for the football game, and at the end got a taste of the whiskey with them, and then on the way out, seeing as we still had the tickets, i got an additional taste upstairs. the Kilbeggan that i got was their standard stuff, and its alot more peaty than Jameson or Powers, or the Tullamore, i liked it, it was prolly a step closer to scotch than most Irish Whiskeys, but still had the depth of flavor that irish whiskeys have.
i drove out of Kilbeggan, practicing my skills at a manual transmission car, despite a rocky start, i could handle the car pretty well, but once we got into a city, i couldnt handle the stop and go traffic, so we switched back. and made our way to Galway, via Athlone.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athlone )
unfortunately when we got to the town there wasnt much to see, the castle in the center of town that i had intended to see, was closed for renovations. there was also a bar around the corner, which was established in 900 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean%27s_Bar ). this bar wasnt all that cool honestly, inside it was full of crap, not interesting historical crap, but kitsch crap that a bar might accumulate over the years, no real theme, just stuff. i dunno that fact that its 1100 years old is worth something, we had a Smithwicks before setting off again for more castles.
now as one might imagine, country roads (which was the kind we were on to find piles of rock) in Ireland are rather small and unkempt, a two lane roads, are designed for 2 cars to drive on, and thats it, no shoulder, no creeping ferns and hedges, 2 cars.
so coming around one turn, another car came about, and we dipped off the road to avoid a collision, and promptly popped the rear passengerside (leftside) tyre (tire).
luckily we were all of 250m away from a petrol station (gas station) when this happened, the tyre (tire) was barely flat when we pulled into the place. we popped the boot (trunk) and pulled out the jack and wrench, however we were unable to operate the nuts, so we called our rental agency who sent out a service vehicle. he showed up in about 45 min, and pointed out there were caps on the lugnuts, and there should be a tool for removing them, there wasnt. we attempted, but since the tool was absent (we didnt even know there was a tool) we couldnt do shit, he pulled em off with a needle nose pliers, and changed the wheel in about 7 minutes. he told us to get a real wheel in Galway (our destination for the night) and set off.
we still had more castles to see, we wandered into athenry castle ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenry ). it was a classic irish townhouse, there will be more of them, read the wiki, im too lazy to talk about it, here are pics
we got into galway dumped the car, dumped our stuff, and looked for food. i found a tapas restaurant, that sources all its food from ireland.
we opened with
goat cheese on bread, with pickled sweet peppers. then i ordered arroz con pollo y chorizo, but they didnt have any chicken, cause they ran out, but i guess when you are getting freerange, chickens from across the river, and not from Tryson, you can run out. anyways, my meal came with the house red wine, but i ordered an Estrella Galicia anyways. the food was fan-fucking-tastic. it wasnt all that expensive either, when we were eating in Dublin we were paying about the same price for food that was just, OK.
after this we went back to the hotel and went to sleep.
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