Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Springtime in Ireland

Irish Pub of the Week #1 - Maccarthy's Bar, Castletownbere

Damn, it's really foggy tonight!

It’s Springtime in Ireland. Everything is glowing green despite the St. Patricks weekend of hail, sleet, snow & pouring rain (often all at once). Even most of the daffodils have survived it all – just a few broken stems. The trees are getting buds and some have pink flowers. Lambs are running in the fields and we have daylight until well after 8pm, which is a weird concept, and will only get later from this point on. The sun is valiantly trying to burn through the cloud layer to raise the daytime temperature out of single digits, but Ireland has a strange meteorological condition at the moment. With the rising temperatures and all the moisture in the fields, an amazing permanent haze (fog) hangs over over the landscape. It looks very much like Aussie bushfire smoke, but when you wind your car window down, the blast of cold air reminds you it’s still March. The haze looks really spooky with all the bare winter trees and has developed into thick pea-soup fog for the last 2 nights when colder air comes down. There’s been some incredible car smashes near Dublin too…
We had some friends (Chris & Shay) up from Dublin for the weekend and it was the first weekend Clare's been home for a full weekend here & not writing assignments! We took a nice walk along the seashore, patted the local dogs (and fed cows), popped in for some craic at the local pub and made a nice dinner. We even discovered some sort of ancient mound, just over the river from our apartments. Clare is away now on a quick 2 day audit in Northern Ireland, while I continue to deal with my DHL clients who seem to exist in a world of permanent happiness. On Monday morning I thought I’d try a new shortcut across the country lanes to the M1 (motorway to work), but ended up taking a long, long drive & discovering lots of new pubs, but alas it was far too early for a Guinness and I eventually got to work just a few minutes late. One more weekend at home, then we're away for Easter...

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