Ireland #14 A Sad Blue Wall

Slept in a bit

 (9:00 and for those of you who know me well, 

you know this isn't really sleeping in for me)

and after breakfast we were out the door.

First it was Courtmacsherry for a little drive around to see 

the views near the water.

Then it was on to Clonekilty to the SuperValu to do

some grocery shopping.

The last time I was in Ireland they didn't have 

these large grocery stores, so it was interesting to 

see what it was like.

Well, let me tell you it was a lot different than

the grocery stores here in the States.

I don't know about where y'all live, but here in the 

Buffalo, NY area we don't have a parking 

garage connected to the grocery store.

I wondered why there was an elevator near the front door,

when I investigated, I found that there were 3 levels for parking.

Very convenient, how nice to not have to load groceries 

in the rain, or if they had this here, in the snow.

Once we were inside the store, we found lots of things

that would never fly here in the States.

Our health laws are much different, but you know

everything there was very fresh and it doesn't seem like

the differences are hurting anyone.

First was the bakery,

where all the bread and rolls are just sitting out

on tables or in bins.

 

Same with the donuts.

Although there is a deli where they serve you,

there was this lunch meat out on a cooler table.

I didn't see any bags, so I'm assuming they would 

wait on the customer here too.

This meat in the butcher area was also out and open on a 

cooler table. These were the sales, sirloin steak and "steak mince"

As well as the fish.

I'm not saying that I have a problem with any of this,

but just that this would never fly here,

the health department would be all over it.

In the deli they had this 

"happy face bologna"

How cute is that?

And they had sandwiches, which is what we picked up for

our lunch today.

They had them pre-made, but would make up whatever we wanted.

Boy were they good. They had a lot of different veggies chopped

to add.  My sandwich had roast beef, cole slaw, onions, 

cheese and lettuce on a nice crusty roll.

I'm not a coffee drinker, but they had huge selection

of coffee beans to choose from.

I had fun just browsing around in the store,

checking out different products and prices.

As for those prices, if you look at some of those signs

you'll see that meat is sold by the kg. and 1 kg is about 1/2 lb.

The sirloin steak is 15.99 Euro/kg so it would be about 8.00 euro/.lb

factoring in the difference in US dollars to Euro

that would be about $10.00/lb

And that's the sales price,

the regular price was 23.99/kg or about $15.00/lb

The smiley face bologna was 10.19/kg or about $6.00/lb

The donuts were 6/2.00 so $2.50/6 

Some things were more expensive, some were less,

I think in the long run, averaged out it was about the same as

the stores here in my area.

The last bit of food that I'm showing you is the

Bacon Chops.

I asked Noreen at the B & B about these bacon chops

as she explained

almost anything that is from a pig is called bacon.

These bacon chops are actually pork chops 

and these happened to have some mustard butter with them.

She would cook up the chops and then put the butter 

on top of them to melt, just like you might put

seasoned butter on a steak.

Well, enough about  the supermarket and food.

We were off to check out 

Old Head Light House.

We saw some beautiful scenery on the way there.

We were very disappointed in that trip.

We did see the light house from VERY far away

while we were driving to the area.

BUT as we had been warned at the B & B

we were not permitted to go see it up close.

A private golf course was built on the land around

the light house.

When this was all proposed, it was promised that the general

population would have access to this beautiful light house and

the surrounding area.

That is not what happened and you are not permitted in if you are 

not going to golf.  The cost of golfing was about 

200 Euro or about $250.

We had hoped that there would be at least a view of 

the light house which is one of the most beautiful in Ireland

(you can see it here)

Many of the people who live in this area

are very upset that people are not allowed to see 

such a national treasure.

The views from outside the golf club

were stunning.

These are some of the cliffs that surround the course.

Those tiny little people in this picture are the other 

Celtic Adventurers

taking in the views.

And off in the other direction......

We didn't spend long at Old Head 

then we were off to Kinsale.

On our other trips to Ireland, Kinsale was one of our

favorite towns.  This time, not so much. 

We did like it, but were disappointed in the 

flowers etc.  I think it was just the wrong time

of the year for the flowers.

But we did find some things to shoot.

Here is one of the Guinness signs 

As I've said before, Guinness is huge in Ireland

this sign shows a man holding a whale up with

one finger.  He has a bottle of Guinness on his back

with a hose going to his mouth.

I also found this sign in a window of 

"Mario's Chipper and Pizzeria Take Away"

Had to take a picture of it, I wondered

how these Buffalo Wings compared to 

what we have here in Buffalo.

When we were here the last time we found a wonderful blue

wall.  The pictures of it are great sellers.

You can see them here and here.

Dave and I wanted to locate the blue wall again

and we did.  Unfortunately, it wasn't quite the same..

Here is what the wall looks like now.

It's actually 2 walls on the same little house.

Here's the other one.

Wouldn't have gotten those beautiful pictures on this trip.

I'm sure if we go to Ireland again, we'll visit Kinsale again,

but for this trip it wasn't a huge success.

So we were back to the B & B to get ready for dinner.

Flowers of the Day

Not only was the Kilcatten Lodge one of the most 

beautiful B & B's that we stayed in,

it has some beautiful gardens and views.

These 3 pictures were taken from the car park 

at the Kilcatten Lodge.

So gorgeous.

These flowers are from Noreen's garden

It was the end of the season, but her roses were still blooming

and absolutely beautiful!

Next post,

A Pink Elephant and This Little Piggy