Another day inside a beautiful painting.

Wednesday 20, December 2006

Another day inside a beautiful painting. The scenery we saw today rivaled that of paintings hanging on the wall of the finest museums.
We took over 500 pictures today. Out of that number, probably 100 are absolutely amazing. The best part is that we stayed “local” today. By local I mean within Louisburgh, where we have been staying since Saturday.

We were at amazing beaches with sweeping vistas of rock, sea and sky with either Clare Island or Crough Padrick (Ireland’s Holiest mountain) hanging in the background and endless fields dotted with sheep, cows, horses and or donkeys off to the side.

We also spent time in “downtown” Louisburgh. It is a small to medium sized village that is growing. We chatted with Brigid, the Auctioneer’s (Real Estate Agent) assistant, the grocer, the girls at the Louisburgh 74 café and their children and Renee popped into the surf shop to say hello to Sarah, who works there. I’m sure there were others too.

So far, this looks like it would be a wonderful place to live. Today we spent a fair amount of time going through the Auctioneer’s list and driving up to the houses for sale. We’ll follow up on one or two tomorrow.

The weather was nicer today. No fog, no rain, just wind, sun and darkness. The sun sets around 4pm here. The skies were quite beautiful today, dotted with clouds large and small.

Today’s list of animals we saw include donkeys, pheasants, cows, horses, sheep (of course) goats, cats and dogs. This includes the two sneaky dogs in Louisburgh that slid their noses under a solid wood fence so they could growl at us and confuse us at to where the hell that noise came from. It was funny, you had to be there.

We continue to enjoy everything about Ireland. It is also very nice to be taking a break from the terrors and frustrations of watching CNN, the network news and reading the paper. News from America is scant. The biggest story that has come through recently was the death of the man (Hannah or Barbera) who was the animator for the Flintsones and other fine cartoons. That actually got a LOT of coverage here.

It is a different world here and that’s a good thing. Christmas is five days away, but, in my opinion, it is a lot more low key than it is in the US. The Irish newspapers, radio and television stations do have ads for Christmas merchandise and sales, but nowhere near as much as ours. The holiday decorations in the towns are there, but simpler, some have an open Christian theme and others not.

I hope that all of your holiday planning and parties are going well and we look forward to being with you next year.

Kevin and Renee