Doolin - Day 1

Hi everyone, nice to meet you!  I'm Jack, star of this blog, and intrepid worldwide adventurer.  I stow away with LT, of The Littlest Thistle, when she goes on holiday, but I get up to far more daring and exciting things than her...

As you can see, LT doesn't travel light.  Me?  It's just me and my jack...

Anyway, here I am at (London)Derry airport waiting to go.  Huh, I've never travelled to a town with brackets before, why does it have brackets LT?  (well, that's a very long story with lots of invasions and fighting and centuries of bigotry, shall we just leave it there? - LT) 

Oh, okay, well here I am waiting for our chauffeur Chris, and backseat driver Mark to come and fetch us.  What?  Not a chauffeur?  Well he drove didn't he?  (Err, yes - LT)  And the other one sat in the back, didn't he?  (Well, I suppose he did - LT)  So our chauffeur then!  (Whatever you say - LT).  We got up at 6:30 am for this, I had better be travelling in the lap of luxury from this point on, getting this far in a bag was quite undignified!  (It wasn't the bag he's sitting on, I should point out - LT)

Here I am sitting in my own little seat on the way down, look at the sun shining in.  Ireland's obviously a very sunny place.

Not long after this we got stuck in a traffic jam at Kilcolgan, just south of Galway city.  Who knew you could get traffic jams in the middle of nowhere?

I felt that this really wasn't the sort of welcoming impression that the residents of county Galway really wanted to give, so I tried to phone and tell them I was a celebearty and to get me out of there.

Do you know, there wasn't a single fast response unit sent!  Anyway, we eventually got through and drove down the twisty, windy road to Doolin, going over Corkscrew Hill on the way (and getting a leeeetle bit car sick too - LT).  Car sick?  Pah, it was a fur ball!

Here I am sitting outside our cottage for the weekend, isn't the view nice?  Chris and Mark decided that I needed to try some Guinness too, and had picked up quite a lot when we stopped at Asda in Strabane (I think the shelves were bare! - LT) 

We got in, and unpacked, and decided that after the nice sunny day that the sun was going to go down behind a thick band of haze on the horizon, so we skipped a sunset photoshoot.  After dinner we went to the pub to enjoy lots of drinks and live music from a band that looked half dead (that wasn't very nice! - LT)  What?  They were very old!  (Well, yes, I suppose they were - LT)  This time the boys introduced me to draught Guinness.

And LT let me have a little of her vodka and diet coke.  The American woman behind was really shocked at putting diet coke with vodka, so we decided she'd come from a really sheltered background.  She didn't smile all night either, maybe she should have tried the vodka and diet coke...

Chris decided he was going to play with his phone torch to make the drinks and me look all glowy, wasn't that fun?

I made a new friend too.  We were sharing half a table with 2 young American girls, and one of them had brought her own critter on holiday.  I didn't catch his name, but apparently he has a Facebook page and everything, hint, hint...

After they'd gone, it was time for more Guinness

Whew, such a lot for a little bear *belch*

For the rest of the night I had to make do with Jameson's whiskey, a much better size of a glass for someone of my stature.

We stumbled walked back up the lane to the cottage at about 1 am, wasn't that a long day?  More tomorrow...