Our Third Day - Getting Ready To Ride

May 22, 2010

We arrived in Killarney on Wednesday. Today is Saturday and tonight we meet up with our biking group. The brochure says a group can be from eight to twenty people. I'm figuring the minimal as it's not yet summer and the temperatures generally don't quite reach 60 during the day (morning starting in the high 40's). So a tour this early in the year will attract only more hardy folks.

Our first night meeting is a get-acquainted dinner at one of Killarney's many restaurants, specifically the lounge at the Arbutus Hotel. Ed has spent the past few days doing some strenuous walking around town and in the park. My cold is doing much better and hopefully this is the last you'll read about it Thank you for all the suggestions on how to expunge it - most of which dealt with drinking large quantities of Guinness. On the topic of beers, I actually am not an afficionado of Guinness which I find too heavy. This time I've been drinking Smithwick's (pronounced, I believe, Smittick's) but, truthfully, in moderation, as I find it just makes me tired and I'm already tired from the cold.

Yesterday, While Ed walked to the Muckross house and gardens and then back, a distance of about 10 miles, I rested and then took a more gentle stroll around town. I like Killarney but I'm a sucker for Irish towns which are generally small and quaint. I like to explore the shops but stay away from the tourist stores with their tacky souveneirs. Instead, I'll visit a department store, hardware or grocery to see the difference in consumer items from our country to theirs. Over the years, those differences have diminished as the global economy expanded but there are still odd little differences and unknown brands and different names for familiar items.

New Sreet with a lovely view of shops, the cathedral and the mountains. Tip: click on any photo to see it larger.

You saw it first here. Get your very own Anti-Terrorism Playset (made in China by the way).

College Street, Killarney.

Ed returned and we strolled downtown for dinner and some music. On our way out I thought we'd sit in the lovely and not-often-seen sunlight on a bench in a downtown plaza and soak up some late-day rays. I shared a bench with a colorful looking man who struck up a conversation with me. Aidan, who is 64, lives in Killarney but grew up in Dublin. A very interesting chap, he'd bicycled all of the world and even now his bike is stored in India at a friend's bike shop. He had lived in New York and California and biked in Tibet, Pakistan and India. He reminisced about his years in New York and his apartment in Inwood (in the northernmost reaches of Manhattan). I told him how much biking had changed in our city in the last few years and how he could now bike the entire west side of the island from the Battery to the George Washington Bridge without ever having to share the path with a car. We chatted for a good half an hour and then Ed and I walked over to a modern, hip pizza restaurant on Main Street where we shared a pie. After, we walked next door to the Grand pub for a set of traditional music. That was grand as the Irish are fond of saying. Again, I left Ed there and returned to the B&B for my first really good full night of sleep. I guess the cold and the jet lag are finally behind me now.

We met Aidan sitting on a bench in the middle of town. He's an intersting and very pleasant Killarnean: A fellow bicyclist, he's been all over the world on his bike: India, Pakistan, Tibet.

Aidan and Ed hamming it up for my camera.

At a modern, and quite good, pizzeria on Main Street.

Fiddler at the Grand Pub.

The crowd at the Grand Pub.

Click here for a video of the musicians playing.