Shannon and Tralee

I knew there were bus services to Shannon Airport but hadn't looked into details until the night before. Turned out it was the hourly Cork-Limerick-Shannon-Galway long distance service. So I bought a ticket over the Internet and got an e-ticket to show on my phone to the driver.

In penance for too much meat the day before I opted for the vegetarian Irish breakfast after having cereal. It was still filling though.

While waiting to check out, I talked over the phone to the airline office in Dublin and had my feeder flight from Dublin to Heathrow preponed by one service to allow a larger margin for transfer, given my experience a few days before. A few weeks later at Heathrow they thought I was a bit too early for the transfer. It seems people had even been arriving the day before a flight to mitigate the effect of the train strikes. Airports and airlines were in a bind.

The hotel had an interesting lift with open walls. You had to hold down the button for the direction you wanted to go.

The same meat store from the day before looking so tempting with the lighting. If you are a meat eater, Ireland has a lot of livestock so it's local and at least has less food miles.

It was raining slightly so I took refuge in the train station which is adjacent to the bus station.

By and by the Cork-Galway bus arrived. It was an uneventful 35 minute ride to Shannon Airport. Apparently this airport, one of the closest to the US, has pioneered innovations such as duty-free shopping. Later on it would become a goods gateway for many of the Irish factories set up to take advantage of lower tax.

I wasted time looking for the car in the parking lot after completing the car rental paperwork. I had not understood the Irish accent of the employee who had actually told me to wait for the shuttle to the car depot a little way from the terminal building. Then I wasted more time trying to figure out how to work the car. It was a one-button start car (but you had to depress the clutch also) and I had to search the Internet for the car manual. If only they had given me a 5 minute crash (bad pun) course.

As a result I didn't get away until noon, an hour after the start of the rental. I originally wanted to lunch in Ennis but decided to head for Tralee which was less of a diversion. I retraced much of the bus route, but instead of heading into Limerick city I turned south to take the Limerick Tunnel that goes under the Shannon. Less fuel burnt would compensate for the 2€ toll.

Like many N (national) roads in Ireland, traffic bottlenecks when going through towns like Tralee. Eventually I found a car park, had lunch, and took a look around. It's an attractive Irish town with colourful buildings with gilt lettering, and a pedestrian zone.

Interesting facade.

Pedestrian street.

The central square.

There aren't any more pictures for this day. It was slow going with the many towns the N roads went through but I didn't mind as I only had to reach Kilarney before evening. I even visited all the three major discount supermarkets in Tralee: Tesco, Aldi, and Lidl to see what they were like (pretty much the same as other countries, with odd bargains in the centre aisles).

Limerick

Here I have arrived at the outside of Limerick Colbert station.

As for the reason I was starting in Limerick, I had discovered that car hire was appreciably cheaper if picked up at Shannon Airport instead of a city. So the plan was to spend a day and a night in Limerick and then catch a bus to airport to pick up the rental car.

It was about 20 minutes walk to the hotel in the old town. It's pleasing in an old-fashioned sort of way. I realised that one of the attractive features of Irish shops is the use of gilt lettering for signs, as well as the use of bright colours for buildings. It makes them stand out in overcast weather.

Notice the Irish harp which is in the Guinness logo. I didn't attend any pubs during my stay by the way. I'm a non-indulgent drinker, I was going to bed early, and finally I didn't want to be in crowded rooms in the current pandemic.

I must have liked the bright red.

As planned for, I was too early to check in, but I could leave my luggage with reception and go explore the city, and grabbing lunch.

A branch of the Shannon is the Abbey and together they bound Kings Island.

The potato market wasn't operating that day and I didn't need a coffee at that time, but the premises were intriguing.

Not the least because of this flower pot.

Limerick is at the head of the Shannon estuary and the banks are close at this point. Further downstream, it takes a road tunnel to burrow under the Shannon.

You might be wondering how the 5 line verse form was named after the city. The theory is that at the end of the recitation in a parlour game, a refrain from a song that goes Won't you come to Limerick? was added.

Modern Limerick doesn't look anything like the poverty-stricken backdrop of Angela's Ashes. I'm sure the slums described are long gone. Note that many of the details of the story are disputed.

A shiny department store of the Dunnes chain.

An enticing meat store in the pedestrian precinct.

By this time I was feeling a bit peckish so I got a fillet of cod and small chips from Luigi's Fish and Chips and took it to the nearby People's Park to consume. Cod is actually fairly tasteless. I suppose if it had taste it wouldn't be fresh. The portion was larger than I expected so I excised the batter and tossed that to the corvids and pigeons.

After that I took some pictures of the rose garden.

Back at the hotel I finally checked in and rested. Although I did stay up until the early evening, there are no more pictures for the day. I got some sandwiches from the Tesco in the shopping centre for dinner. The music for the adjoining pub could be heard until about midnight. I woke in the small hours, pottered a bit, then went back to sleep until morning.