Whew. What a full on weekend! We have had great fun with our Jules. She was previously known as Evie's Canadian friend. She is now *our* Canadian friend (still Evie's, don't worry, we didn't "steal" her).
She is our first proper visitor. We've had people over for dinner etc, but she is the first person we've had to rearrange the lounge and inflate a mattress for! Beau and I have been saving some of our touristing for when a visitor came so we went and did lots of stuff with her. We also dragged her along to some of our "regular" things.
Friday
Drinks and Karaoke! Homebody and Neid organised a group and a Karaoke room at a local bar. Jules was determined to buy all our drinks, but helpful Irish thwarted her plans. Beau and I attempted to buy drinks in return, but Fotalad resoundly refused us and bought Beau a drink instead? We got home sometime between midnight and 1. I thought it would be a good time to call Evie (midday on a Saturday is normally about right), but she was out. This was perhaps a good thing.
Saturday
In the morning,I took Jules to the historic English Market and stocked up on groceries and picnic supplies. We made and then took sandwiches with us and ate them on the grounds of Blarney Castle. We'd all worked up good appetites after climbing the castle steps to kiss the stone. On our way to catch the bus back to Cork we came upon a group of American tourists, sprawled on a field looking for 4-leafed clover (stereotypical-much?). We had time to kill, so joined them. Jules found one pretty quickly and kindly gave it away to the disbelieving Americans.
When we got back to Cork, we started the walk to the Cork City Gaol. This is an old gaol and is now a tourist spot. We didn't actually get a look into the Gaol because we were there for the Taste of Cork food festival, which was taking place in tents set up in the grounds surrounding the Gaol (which btw looks quite castle-ish). It was pretty standard as far as food festivals go. It was the first they've had in Cork and I think NZ has the whole thing down a bit better.
Highlights included the free stuff (food, wine, whisky, chocolate, irish creme samples), the bands, the fire "jugglers" (there was staff work and fire hoola-hooping) and just hanging out together. Lowlights included lack of seating, high priced non-free stuff, people smoking. The walk back went a lot quicker than the walk there. Why is that always true?
Sunday
Again we packed lunches and this time we caught a train. We visited Fotalad at Fota and shared much food with him. We also saw many animals and delighted in seeing people playing with a baby cheetah (they were throwing a soft toy for it!). We had heaps of fun watching a Gibbon race around his Island with a rat. The other adult gibbon (with baby Gibbon attached around its middle) kept chasing it. Highly amusing.
I mis-read the train timetable so Jules sat reading in the sunshine on the platform, while Beau and I went for a short walk and got very silly in a discussion on red pandas and the possibility of Beau having one for a pet. Luckily we came across Fotalad disposing of some "compost" before we got out of control.
We then had a quick visit in Cobh, checking out St Colman's (again for Beau and I) and going on an unsuccessful mission for scoop ice-cream. I had been really keen in going to the Carrilon recital (St Colman's has something like 49 bells), but it ended up being a bit of an anticlimax. It *was* nice hearing the bells though.
On our way home we decided we would have a Canadian dinner as our last dinner with Jules, so we had pancakes, with banana, bacon and *maple* syrup. We had dessert and hot chocolate too!
I'm looking forward to our next visitor. It was really great making a new friend in Jules!
Point of Fashion: unthinking
Current Obsession: Can sleepy Giffy effectively game tonight?