Today we left Derry bright and early and made a long loop through the Donegal Peninsula and down to the coast town of Bundoran. The scenery is spectacular and the small towns are full of historic old pubs and ruined churches and colourful buildings… Everything is green. The roads are super narrow (with 100km/hr speed limits!) and the vehicles way too big for them.
Highlights of the trip include a ruined old church with even older carvings worked into one of its walls, a fantastic pint of Guinness in a little roadside pub in one of the many towns we passed through.
After gassing up in one of the little towns, Marie pulled out onto the wrong side of the road… She picked up on it almost immediately (the car coming directly at us was a dead giveaway) and pulled back into her lane right away… Prompting an absolutely epic stink eye from the elderly woman driving the car… She was so not amused… We thought her reaction was hysterical – Marie must have pulled back into the proper lane with about a 1000 yards to spare but there was no getting away without a stern glaring down…
We also stopped at a beautiful beach at Portnoo – it was funny to see people in their bikinis with their winter coats pulled around them while kids frolicked in the water… Caitlin put her toes in and pronounced it even colder than our water at home…
After the beach, we also made a stop in Ardara – home to a whackload of sweaters and tweed coats. Most were closed (we pulled in around 6) but we checked out Eddie Doherty’s shop – nice stuff… if you have $500+ for a tweed sports coat that is… wow are they expensive. After closing down his shop we walked a couple of doors down and had a quick pint in Doherty’s bar (apparently owned by the same Eddie Doherty that owned the tweed shop) before hitting the road and making a beeline for Bundoran.
Bundoran isn’t much to write home about. Beautiful beach. Lots of tacky tourist restaurants and bars and amusement arcades, etc. We wandered down the main drag and back to find a place to eat and settled on Chinese takeout next door to our hostel. We wanted to try the Phoenix Tavern across the street but it was a members’ only place… I’ve never seen a members’ only bar before… And when it’s called the Phoenix you start to wonder (the Phoenix is heavily associated with the IRA)…
After scarfing our Chinese food, we headed up to the room, showered off the day’s grime and called it a night. I’m sure other stuff happened today but I’m quite a few days behind on the blog so will keep this one short so I can start to get caught up…
Forty-Nine Nights in Europe 