WB Yeats Grave

Walking by the River in Sligo

Statue of Yeats in Sligo

Old Grey Frog and the Harpist
Megalithic Tomb near Sligo

Stone Circles at the Megalithic Site of Carrowmore

The Harpist, BW Babe, and Old Grey Frog on the Tour Bus

Ballina (Beal an Atha)

Drinks at the Frog Bar

Word of the Day

Teletalktic - Describing one who talks frequently on the phone.


Once again I woke up at 5:30 AM in order to have time to organize, pack, and get me butt down to the lobby to do a final check of emails. Since I had a nice connection to the internet in the lobby, I added some links to my blog....not ALL of my blogs have links to the sites that we've seen but, I started.

Returning to the room, I pulled a Kylee and attempted to herd BW Babe a bit, harassing her to finish up with her packing so we could haul all our bags down to the lobby. I was told, firmly, that we had plenty of time....but...but...OK, we did have plenty of time, but I am what I am...I need to be on time and feel like I'm late if I'm ten minutes early.

After hauling all our bags down to the lobby of the hotel, BW settled into the lobby with a bite to eat for breakfast and a coffee (guarding the luggage) while I resisted temptation in the breakfast room and only grabbed a couple of pieces of brown bread (kind of like a whole grain wheat bread but...better).

All the bags were loaded onto the bus by 9:30 AM. After boarding, a tablet of paper was sent around so we could let our tour organizers know what flights we'd be taking to return to the states on Thursday. Wow! It's hard to believe that it's already so close to the time when we'll be heading back home.

Our driver, Mike, drove us slowly through the town of Donegal and we watched as people gathered in front of a church. Oh, that's right. It's Sunday! Of course people would be heading to church on a Sunday. I know that some of our tour group attended mass at a Catholic church in Letterkenny before we left.

Rain! We encountered LOTS of rain as we drove through Sligo County (Yeats' Country) as we headed to our first stop, a visit to W.B. Yeats' grave. As we gathered by the gravesite, Batt recited a few of his favorite poems that Yeats wrote. I think that in the future when I read poetry written by Yeats, I will always hear it in Batt's voice.

We drove to the town of Sligo for lunch. The Harpist, Lord Douglas, Mr. D, BW Babe and I exited the bus along with our fellow tour members and headed to whatever restaurant hit our fancy. We picked The Grappa, near the Italian Quarter of Sligo. The sandwiches and soups were truly excellent.

After lunch, we drove to Carrowmore, a megalithic passage tomb cemetery which pre-dates the tombs we saw at Newgrange and Knowth. Our tour of the site was conducted by a very entertaining and knowledgeable guide. A lot of the questions that I'd been pondering since seeing similar sites in Scotland were answered.

We arrived at our hotel in Ballina (Beal an Atha)at around 4:30 PM and were greeted by the desk hostess who gave us each two coupons for reduced drinks at the hotel bar. The hotel, The Downhill House Hotel is a rather old hotel. Although they have a lift, the room that BW Babe and I were assigned to was located in a rather difficult location as far as navigating four suitcases goes. Thankfully, we were rescued by a porter or I'm sure I would have ended up with a broken arm at the bottom of the winding staircase down to our basement room. Actually, the room is very nice but...we WILL need a porter when we leave this place on Tuesday morning.

Dinner was very nice. We had a smoked trout salad, fish pie, and baked Alaska. How can you top that? We've got live music tonight with some musicians that are members of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann who will be joining up with the musicians in our tour group for a jam session. What a wonderful way to end the evening.  They'll be playing at The Frogs (Bar).  The walls of the bar are decorated with all kinds of paintings of frogs.  My kind of place.

Random Quote of the Day

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

Oscar Wilde