Last day, number 10, Thursday, June 14. Supposed to take the tram to Howth for an oceanside hill climb. Cancelled due to high winds. Our alternative was to take the tram/DART to Clontarf and go on a substitute route, an unproved hike, which Robert devised last minute, to a UNESCO biosphere reserve that took us to North Bull Island and then to St Anne’s Park with it’s physic/herbal garden at Clontarf. Although the winds were very high, 50 to 70 kph, and we were being buffeted around even on our flat course, the day turned out well. It was sunny and warmed up and we clocked 15km. Everyone agreed it was a good substitute for the original plan as we still got to see and feel the Irish Sea. As we were passing through St Anne’s, I chatted with a dog owner and she asked where we were from and what we were doing. I told her we had hiked at Glendalough, pronouncing it as it looks and she jumped in and corrected me, ‘Glenda-LOCKH’! I knew that because Janet had said it that way and I should have known better.
We ended the hike at a pub near the DART station to take us back in to Dublin.
Dinner was at bloom brasserie, around the corner from our hotel. I had ‘Salad of Fivemiletown Irish Goats’ Cheese, Marinated Peaches, Pecans, Wild Berry Coulis as the starter, Striploin of Irish Hereford Beef served Medium Rare, Home Cut Fries, Pink Pepper and Chive Butter, Jus, for the main, and ended with Walnut and Caramel Tart, House Baileys Ice Cream...pretty good but my beef was not medium rare, more like medium to well and they must have run out of the Baileys for the ice cream and figured no one would notice...they used up all the capitals for their menu and had none left for their name!
At the bottom of the menu, it states ‘all beef, lamb and poultry on our menu is 100% Irish - no mention what they are fed. Sorry Derek. I did google ‘Irish beef’ and it said they were fed a ‘grass-based diet’ and for Irish butter, it says ‘mostly grass-fed’...we do have a Saskatchewan farmer named Ron on the hiking trip and I saw him try to feed a handful of grass to a cow but I think maybe the cow knew he wasn’t Irish. The cow totally ignored him. It was probably his Canadian accent as he said ‘coboss, coboss’! (Supposed to be universal cow lingo!)
That Irish cow was playing hard to get. Pretty girls do that.
ReplyDeleteHave there been any healings or other psychic interventions on this trip yet? I learned all about the overlay of various esoteric grids in Ireland, which promote such things at a conference on the weekend.
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