If ever there were an antithesis of an Irish pub, this is it. Yet for reasons purely logistical here I sit, surrounded by chrome and red and white vinyl, brightly lit by halogens and fluorescents, listing to calculatedly cheery music. The tea has an odd taste to it; I may be forced to switch to Coca Cola (beer only served with a substantial meal, and it looks like the only beer is something modeled on American Swill Beer).

All right, Johnny Cash just came on, so there’s one redeeming facet of this place.

Sweet!

Thanks!

It was a pleasant time in Kilkenny, a touristy place but gracefully so, picturesque and friendly. When we got off the bus we had no idea where to stay, and none of us had bothered to check what time it would be when we got there. It wasn’t terribly late, but it was late enough to make finding a place to stay a bit worrisome after our adventures in Sligo (rhymes with “closed”). We gatihered up our luggage and started the tromp toward the center of town.

We hadn’t gone far when we saw a sign for a B&B. They were full, but they directed us across the street to William Byrne’s Pub. Soon we were installed in a room and free to explore the city at night. After a nice dinner at a Pub (established in 12-something-something by a woman who was married four times, opened an inn or three, then was accused of witchcraft and force to flee for her life — her staff and associates didn’t fare so well and met demises so grisly it’s hard to imagine anyone remotely civilized condoning them), we returned to our “home pub”, set up laptops, and I composed a couple of the previous episodes. (Things are getting a bit asynchronous here; sorry about that.)

Somewhere around closing time the bartender struck up conversation with fuego and me. We talked about movies, Web sites, music, and life in general. It turned out we were talking to Wm. himself, head honcho and owner of the establishment.

The next morning, or should I say later that same morning, we were a bit sluggish as we staggered down the stairs into the pub for breakfast. There was Billy, looking quite a bit more chipper than I felt. Breakfast was among the best I’d had on the trip, the full Irish deal for me (less mushrooms), while the others chose different items off the menu (one advantage I hadn’t considered to staying at a B&B connected to a restaurant is that the options for breakfast are much more varied).

That day we didn’t get a whole lot of sightseeing done, and what we did consisted mainly of wandering around the town aimlessly. I did manage to do a bit of writing, and a bit of napping. That night we finished up at Billy’s again, but although I stayed up working longer than the others, it was almost a reasonable time when I went upstairs to crash.

This morning we were up a little bit before Billy, who rushed down the stairs to open the pub for us. He explained that he had been on the Internet into the wee hours, playing with an internet jukebox type of site. The Internet — an intoxicating thing! We poked around town a bit longer and with more purpose, left Billy with a copy of Pirates and a bottle of Becherovka, and on we went to Cork.

Sweet!

Thanks!