Hello from Limerick, Ireland. Though a little reluctant to leave Cork, we are enjoying seeing more of the country. We had to do a little puzzle-solving to get all of our luggage and gear into the coach (bus), but we managed. And we were off for Blarney, home of the Blarney Stone.
It seems that most of the choir went to climb to see the stone, and some even hung over backwards to kiss it—but the ones who did probably didn’t need the extra eloquence it promised. Others of us walked around a bit, perhaps tried some Irish stew, and checked out the shops and stores with their woolens and Belleek china and Waterford and other beautiful crystal. Our luck has left us for at least a day, and it was a chilly and drizzly—sorry—soft day.
Back on the bus to drive to Adare, a quaint village with some medieval abbey ruins, a world-class golf course built around those ruins, and a working abbey from “only” the fifteenth century. It’s all in the year in which you started counting your country’s history.
On to Limerick, a town of about 53,000. It also is a mix of very old and fairly recent.
We are in a Travelodge in this city, which afforded us the opportunity to travel en masse to a pub for dinner. For the satisfaction of those of you back home who might think your loved one has been neglected, here are all of us at our various pub tables.
I’ve let the photos do most of the talking in this blog, so I hope they have helped give a feeling for our day. There is a little different feel to the days now as we have left the festival and begun our “real” tour of changing cities more frequently, and a concert almost every night. The choir is looking forward to singing a complete concert tomorrow night.