St. Patrick's Day, part 2 - The Pat Strikes Back!

Lori read the notes, bringing smiles, tears and the like. We got some pictures of everyone at the bridge before following Dave’s advice and going to find a pub.

We followed the road to Cong, which also holds a strong heart for the Quiet Man movie. There is a Quiet Man statue there. Pat Cohan’s pub, which is featured in the movie is there (but was out of season to be open, unfortunately) and they also have a Quiet Man museum there but it was closed. There were the remains of an old Abbey and cemetery, which I spent trying to get good shots at. We ended up at the Crowe’s Nest, where we had our St Pat’s day lunch. I had Irish Lamb Stew

because...really...what could be more Irish? Mirinda and I chose to have some hot chocolate with Baileys and Kelly discovered 'Miwadi', which was an infused water fruit drink thing that was surprisingly tasty. We toasted to Dave and enjoyed our time together as rugby played on the tele. Then we scattered to the wind, dividing up and checking out the various sites of town, doing some shopping and finally meeting up to head back to Ballynahinch.

It was a very peaceful little village for St. Patrick's mid day and was absolutely charming.

On the way back, we made a point to try to get a picture of a dilapidated keep we saw on an island on the way in. Kelly took that shot since he was on that side of the van...hopefully it will come out because it was very cool (oh look! He got it on the next pages!)

We decided instead of doing dinner out or going to a pub to hit a store and grab our own booze and food - we headed into Clifdon, which was a very quaint little town full of hills and buildings...it was also fairly active while we drove through. We grabbed the booze - we grabbed the food, we drove through town and then headed back. Amy and I took a walk for a bit after visiting with Mom over facebook to check on the boys

and then went upstairs to Kelly and Mirinda’s room, where everyone pooled their food together. We ate, we drank, we had Quiet Man playing on Kelly’s Ipad and visited, talking about how each of we couples got together. Everyone was tired and we planned to leave early tomorrow, so we called it a night around 10ish. Amy and I packed up things for tomorrow, played a new game (Mr. Jack) and then journaled before bed.

Tomorrow, the Cliffs of Mohar and Mudcrox House