Day 17

0630 GMT - Eamon is the first to wake up.  Amy turns on the TV to let him watch some cartoons.  It is MUCH harder to sleep in the same room with Eamon while he watches cartoons.  He tends to have a running dialogue with the television, and usually loses his volume control at some point in the conversation.  I rise and get dressed to take a run before our scheduled 0830 breakfast.  I have finally surrendered to the reality that between holiday closures and our travel schedule, I may not make it to a store to replace the running clothes I left in Scotland.  It has already been more than a week since my last run, and I need to get my legs stretched.  I bundle in layers of already dirty clothes and put on my hat and gloves and head out into the light mist.  This is not too much different than an early morning run in Seattle in the late autumn.  It is quite stunning to have the sun rising of Buratty castle as I run by.  I make a guess as to my halfway point for turning around, based on where I am in my Working Out playlist on my iPod.  I look forward to Apple's upcoming flash model, since I can only get around 20 minutes before my current iPod starts to skip.  At the gym I can clip it to the treadmill and not worry about skipping, but out in nature I have to face that 20 minute limit.

0830 GMT - We head down to breakfast, which is again very nice.  Eamon selects a "special" French style pancake, very thin and more like a crepe, while Amy and I go with the traditional Irish breakfast.   The fruit, bread and cereal selection here is not as broad as Drum Creehy, but it is adequate.  Eamon LOVES his pancake, but suddenly he gets some food caught, gags, and says that he is going to puke.  I grab napkins and a bowl and start moving him upstairs to our room, but he begins vomiting along the way.  I keep it all in the napkins and bowl and get him upstairs successfully.  I give him some water and he feels better, so we return to finish breakfast.  Ah,  the TRUE joys of parenthood.  Eamon and I watch the end of "The Never Ending Story" whille Amy heads to find an ATM machine, since this B&B only accepts cash.

1130 GMT - We hit the road, trying to get to Kenmare before dark, we have been told that it is about two hours away.  We go back to Buratty castle, this time to check out the attached historical park which has replicas of life in 1800's - early 1900's Ireland.  I am very disappointed.  The park is nice, and the animals are out and about, but because of the holidays there are no people present in the shops or the houses to portray the people of the time. 

I wish they had told us when we bought the tickets that it was not a full experience this week.  We check out the empty dwellings, including the house that the makers of HB ice cream lived in, Eamon plays in a little castle playground, and then we hit the pub for lunch. 

We chat with a Californian woman who has been living in Belfast, Northern Ireland (part of the UK) for a year whose husband and son are visiting.  The people who sit at their table after they leave are also Americans, and after a short chat we learn that they are the family who moved into the Connemara Country Cottages house that we were staying in after we left.  We laugh and joke about the absurdity of 200 TV channels and no phone and ask if we left any toys.  They say no. We decide that it is time to hit the road.

1540 GMT - It is still light out, but we have only made it as far as killarny.
We try to pull off the main road to find a phone and call the B&B for tonight once I read the notes and realize that if we won't make it by 1600, we are supposed to call.  We find a phone booth in the middle of a residential neighborhood. While Amy is on the phone, a dog walks up to check us out and he begins to bark visciously, not at us but at a teenager walking by. I usher Eamon back into the car, and suddenly I find a VERY hard chunk in the gum I am chewing.  I take it out to find a small piece of what looks like a tooth.  I feel around with my tongue only to find that the porcelain part of my crown has fractured and exposed the metal beneath.  Amy returns to say that she spoke to the owner of the B&B and he tells us that it will be another two hours, and to avoid the "scenic" route and stick to the main highway or it will take 3-4 hours.  I tell her about my tooth, but because it seems to be causing me no pain, I decide to wait until we get home to deal with it. If it starts to hurt, we can try to deal with it in Dublin.  The drive seems to take forever, and when we finally take the exit to head towards Kenmare, it is already dark and Connor has awakened and begun to scream.  We can tell that the scenery must be stunning, but we cannot see any of it, and Connor is still screaming which would make it impossible to enjoy anyway.  1630 has been his limit, beyond that he cannot bear to be in the car.

1730 GMT - The very curvy roads in the dark have slowed us down, and many people passed us throughout the drive.  Connor screamed the entire way.  We follow the directions Amy got from the B&B owner and arrive at the house. 
It is quite cute, up on a hill above the road and surrounded by Christmas lights. 

It is a little roomier and nicer than last night's B&B, but still not as nice as Drum Creehy.  It will be our last B&B, two nights and then we are off to Cork and Dublin.  We pack up in our rain gear and hike down to town, in the dark over a little bridge shortcut our host told us how to find.  We come out on a street with a sign pointing the way to the Druid Stone Circle that we have read about and take note of that.  We pick a restaurant, after much rigamarole, eat some food and hike back to the B&B for a good nights sleep.