dinner

Saturday, Alba

Posted on by Susan

Saturdays are the huge market day here, and I walked over early to see what it was all about. I was in search of fruit and vegetables, but there were streets full of everything else: men’s and women’s clothes, shoes, purses, and all sorts of household goods. The tables were chock-full of merchandise. I walked around for about an hour, then went back to where we are staying so the two of us could check things out.

We took a different route and eventually came upon the produce I was looking for.

After coffee, we dropped our bags back at our apartment and headed toward our tour of underground Alba. By now – 10:30- the streets were full of people, children, strollers, and dogs, and it took some time to get around.

We eventually found the meeting place. We knew the tour would be in Italian, but they gave us the script typed in English, which was nice and helpful.

It was interesting to see what archaeologists uncovered under the streets of the city, some under a church, a bank, and the police station.

The tour lasted about two hours and we had lunch at our apartment then walked around some more, this time in a direction we had not checked out before. We eventually headed back to make dinner.


photos: fruits and vegetables at the market today

underground Alba

the busy market

Tuesday: Lyon

Posted on by Susan

It poured all last night and a good part of today – the best reason to take a tour of the city via the hop-on, hop-off tour bus. We enjoyed seeing and hearing about an overview of many parts of Lyon and never hopped off the bus until the last stop.

It was a good day to check out Pralus Lyon, a bakery known for its praline and chocolate breads and it is mainly what they sell. I walked there in a downpour (why not) and was happy to leave the store with a small loaf of praline. It is delicious.

We finished the day meeting our daughter’s friend for dinner. She lives in Lyon and had lots of interesting insights about life there. It sounds grand.


photos: top – praline loaves

bottom – short, squat variety of zucchini that seems common to this area

L’epicerie, a nice place for dinner tonight

Thursday: Wexford

Posted on by Susan

With Hurricane Lorenzo threatening rain and wind today, it wasn’t the best day to go to the Wildfowl Reserve, but we aren’t in Wexford long so we seized the moment anyway.

We had an interesting drive on some back roads – small houses set close to the road, huge houses behind gates and then the reserve at the end of a dirt road.

It was much too cold to take any of the hikes they had mapped out but we could see birds from the observation tower. There was a class of adorable school children in the tower too, and they were fun to interact with a bit.

We eventually left and went into the town of Wexford, where finding a parking space is no joke. We did, then walked around a bit in the cold rain. The rain and wind got worse throughout the afternoon as the storm made its way to our part of the country.

We had a delicious dinner at the hotel and planned for our drive to near Galway tomorrow.

photos: Hurricane preparedness while we were out of our room today.

below: a view from the tower. bird looking for food at low tide

Tuesday: Dalkey

Posted on by Susan

 

20191001_132526This morning’s weather was rainy, windy, cold, and generally miserable. We still followed through with our plan to go to Dalkey, a suburb of Dublin that is about a half-hour train ride from Dublin.

My cousin lives there (she is in the U.S. for a few weeks so we had to change our plans to spend a few days there this week) and so does Van Morrison, Bono, Sinead O’Connor, and some other interesting people. Dalkey is a charming city and even though we were not going to stay there, it was still worth checking out.

Or was it?

The walk to the Dublin train station was a bit of a struggle with the wind but we got there eventually and didn’t have to wait long for a train.

Once in Dalkey, it seemed to be even colder, windier, and it continued to rain as we walked into town.

We were content to sit in a warm, dry coffee shop for a while and then left and tried to enjoy the shops on the main street.

Eventually we had some delicious seafood chowder and decided to go back to Dublin. It was not the best day to visit Dalkey. The train on the way back was delayed for an hour because of the weather and I was grateful we were sitting in it rather than waiting on the platform.

Eventually we realized that the train we were on aas not going to our intended destination, so we got off and waited for another one – frustrating.

We walked back to our hotel and have a fun dinner with our Ireland-based niece near where we are staying. This salvaged our otherwise cold day.

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