The First Free Weekend

Day 7 & 8 - A Free Weekend...Saturday was another beautiful day filled with sunshine and warmer temperatures. Hard to believe we have been here a week! We got up and Cyndi headed off to a day of dance workshops in nearby Birr (she is a dance major) and Allison and I went off in search of the traditional Irish breakfast. We found it fairly closeby and after looking at the amount of food included we decided to chicken out and rather than the "Full Irish" we each had the mini-version. Still an amazing amount of food..Pork and Beans, 2 slices of toast and butter, a large slice of bacon (more like Canadian bacon) 2 links of sausage, 1 egg, Black Pudding and White Pudding. Ahh...you ask, "black pudding?" Here is a description from the BBC website. Black pudding is a blend of onions, pork fat, oatmeal, flavourings - and blood (usually from a pig). As long as animals have been slaughtered to provide food, blood sausages like black pudding have been in existence.  White pudding is similar but deletes the blood. On the whole I preferred the white pudding and not because of the blood. It just tasted better. All the above comes with a pot of tea which I have actually begun to drink with cream/milk. It is just so odd...I used to think.."why on earth would anyone put cream or milk in their tea?" and now I know it is because it is tasty.

After breakfast we wandered to the town center. I wanted to go to the bookstore at the new mall to find a book about the flora of Ireland and I wanted to go by the Library as well. The mall is pretty typical of any mall you would find here. They have national chains that are different than ours..but really if you didn't listen to the accents you would be hard pressed to determine where you were. We went to Easons and I found a great book about trees that had myths and legends associated with each tree. Allison bought some presents and postcards and we were off to the Library which is right next to the mall.

Have I mentioned this is a 3 day weekend here in Ireland? Yep a bank holiday on Monday so the Library was closed for the weekend! Drats...still we decide to wander down to the Shannon cause it is such a nice day.

Allison by the Shannon

Gee...it is sad that I am so obviously unhappy.. :)

On Sunday it was back to grey, cold and wet. Seriously spent the day with homework and resting. They run us pretty hard here so a day to re-charge was a good thing indeed!

Next: Bank Holiday Excursion to Dublin