Tuesday, March 15
After a couple of pretty full days, and a weather forecast that looked iffy anyway, the plan for Tuesday was a pretty low key morning. My nieces had school, so they went off to that, but the rest of us slept in a bit. The boys got a kick out of riding along with my sister to drop the girls at school.
It’s nice, on vacation, to have some days where you’re more “up and at ‘em” and others where you just relax more. I think this is why we prefer long vacations whenever possible. If you only have a couple days, it’s hard to justify too much lounging around, if there are things you want to see and do! But when you have many days, it’s easier to create that balance.
Anyway, thanks to my sister’s chickens, there is always a plethora of eggs around here, so Ivan decided to make “huevos a la mexicana”. (Basically just eggs, onion, tomatoes, and normally jalapeño (substituted some other spicy pepper sold here- sadly their Mexican produce in Ireland is lacking a bit. 😉 )
Later in the morning, my sister left with the boys to go pick up niece #2, who gets out of school earlier than niece #1. They were planning to stop by the store for a few things to kill time in between the different pick up times. Ivan decided to go along with them too. He wanted to look for a couple of things at the store, anyway.
I stayed behind with my parents, showered, and then just puttered around with my photos and blog posts, I think.
Finally we left to meet up with everyone in the early afternoon. It was raining on and off and a quite blustery day. The plan was to meet up outside niece #1’s school and head to a museum (indoors!).
Museum of Country Life
The museum isn’t too large, but it’s a National Museum of Ireland, and it’s actually free! It covers a lot of history of Irish life over the years, with an introductory video, and exhibits about Ireland’s industries, traditional dress, holidays, old modes of transportation, history and more.
Some of the exhibits weren’t overly kid friendly, so some things were a bit lost on them, but we still had a really nice time. It was what I’d consider a nice “overview” of traditional Irish culture! I found it very interesting.
After reading as many exhibits as we could, the littler kiddos were kind of “done”, so we called it a day. 🙂 They did want to go to the gift shop, however, so we spent some time in there browsing lots of fun Irish themed items.
I picked up a great bookmark to add to my travel bookmark collection!! It’s not handy right now, but I’ll share a pic another time. 🙂
From the museum, we stopped by a McDonald’s drive thru…. Ethan really wanted to try a shamrock shake here and see if they are “different”. 😉 (nice excuse.) Unfortunately, they were out of them!! They had to settle for chocolate and vanilla.
It was about a 20-25 minute drive back toward town. There, we stopped by a food truck to pick up fish and chips to take home for dinner! There’s a guy who parks in a gas station parking lot 3 days per week and sells delicious fish and chips. Apparently he is well loved around these parts and very popular. (With good reason, because the food was really good!!!)
(Shockingly, I didn’t photograph my fish and chips!! Guess I was too hungry.)
Pub-
Later on, after dinner, my parents, Ivan and I went into town for a couple drinks at the pub. The boys wanted to just chill at home (they are not impressed that in Ireland, there aren’t really beverages for kids at restaurants! They love to get lemonade when we go out at home, but no such thing, here. 😦 )
My sister’s kids were in bed and she and her husband had some things to do, anyway, so they stayed back.
It’s got a very nice atmosphere- a cozy little place. It’s the same pub we went to the first evening, with my sister.
The cute fireplace:
Not busy meant we snagged the table by the fireplace again! Yay!
When we got home, the boys were hanging out in the sunroom playing some old school Nintendo! My sister does not have, um, all of the fancy “electronics” my boys are used to at home….. haha. No Xbox or anything here, so they have made do with this old Nintendo. 😉
Tuesday was a quieter day, but it still felt perfectly full and wonderful. I’m feeling extremely content with how this trip has been playing out!! So grateful. ❤️❤️
GRATEFUL KAE 
sounds like a relaxing day. fresh eggs? you are so lucky!
why does it rain so much? is it normal during this time of the year?
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It’s just the climate here. Kind of how it rains a ton in Seattle, Washington. It really rains a lot in Ireland basically year round. They don’t have very distinct “seasons”- I mean, kind of, but not like we have in Wisconsin with very cold winters and very hot summers. In Ireland it gets a little warmer in summer, but never hot. And in winter it doesn’t snow really or get below freezing. So similar temps mostly year round- pretty cool, cloudy, damp/wet…. With some occasional sunny days mixed in. Ha!
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I’m intrigued by the lack of kid drink options in restaurants. What are they meant to drink when they eat out? Just water?
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I forgot to mention in my last comment that I love that you took the kids to the store, even if they were not super impressed. I think it is interesting to see how different grocery stores are in other countries. Like in Paris, I was never able to find salsa! I was on a kick of eating scrambled eggs with salsa on them so was really missing being able to eat salsa (I rented an apt so always made at least one meal at home). But then their cheese section was probably bananas compared to ours at home.
That is interesting about the lack of drink options for kids.
Also, your sister’s kitchen looks pretty small, which I think is probably typical for Europe, but because it’s small, it makes meal prep like what Ivan did look way messier! But in our giant American kitchens it would have looked like a normal meal!
I can’t say I LOVE Minnesota’s climate but I definitely prefer it to all the rain that Ireland seems to get! I do like that we have distinct seasons and that summer/fall is so beautiful here – especially fall. I just don’t love rain… I would rather walk in snow than in rain! I have taken the boys for stroller walks on snowy days and didn’t think twice about doing that. Going for walks in the rain is a harder sell, though!
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