I woke this morning at the usual time and headed down to
breakfast only to discover that they were serving off the continental bar
today. The breakfast was less than
stellar off the bar. I missed my usual
eggs Benedict and bacon. After
breakfast, I decided to hit the shops.
My intention was to buy my wife a souvenir from Derry. So far, I haven’t been able to find anything
touristy here.
Disappointed, I decided to trek up to the monastery that
that CD had showed me earlier. I
guess I didn’t realize how long that walk was when I was riding in the
car. It took me an hour to trek down the
river, up the hill, and finally find the monastery (after passing the turn-off
a couple of times). Along the way, I
found a really neat park along the river with walking trails, trees, and lush
green grass. Also, after one of my wrong
turns, I ended up in Brandwell, which had some really neat houses and murals.
I followed the whole trip that CD had taken me and
walked back through Creggan, guiding myself by the few landmarks that seemed
familiar. It was a long walk, especially
trudging up that hill, and I was exhausted when I finally made it back to the
hotel. At the hotel, I mapped out my
walk, and I found out it was about 2.5 miles in total.
But I didn’t stay there long, deciding to high-tail it down
the street to The Sandwich Co. for a soup and sandwich. The lunch was amazing. I had a BLT and the soup of the day, which
was a vegetable soup. The BLT was not
traditional, in that they had mixed all of the ingredients together in a sort
of sandwich spread. The whole thing was
very tasty. Would go again…five stars.
After lunch, SD had agreed to take JM, KM,
and I on a driving tour through Donegal (pronounced Donnie Gall). We headed northwest to Buncrana and then
followed the coast road up to Ballyliffin before turn around and heading
southeast to Carndonagh, Quigley’s Point, Muff, and finally back to Derry. Besides the amazing scenery and coastal
views, we also stopped at Fort Dunree to take some pictures and enjoy the
freezing cold wind before journeying on.
Here’s a funny story about Muff, Northern Ireland. Muff sits right on the border between Ireland
and Northern Ireland. One of the guys in
the class, BM, actually lives in Muff.
He said that what Muff is actually famous for is their scuba diving
club. They’re called the Muff Divers.
Well, I was supposed to meet JM and KM to go out to
the Sooty Olive tonight, so after a quick nap, I texted him. Apparently, he forgot we were going to go and
went somewhere else without me. So,
pissed off that he didn’t text to let me know, I set off to try to find
something. I wasn’t feeling like eating
out alone and needless to say most things in the town are closed, except pubs,
so I ended up at Paolo’s Pizza again. I
tried the pepperoni pizza this time. The
pepperonis were tiny, like small sausages.
I ended up picking half of them off.
The pizza was okay, nothing great.
It could have been that I just wasn’t in the mood for pizza again. I watched the Proposal while I ate, and now
I’m going to bed. I feel like I’m giving
Twitter updates or something.
