We had our first and only breakfast at Garnish House. It was delicious and offered a huge amount of food for ten euro per person. Philip even had Baileys cream on his porridge, and I had eggs en cocotte with cheddar topping which was one baked egg covered with melted Irish cheddar and warm Irish cream served in a small baking dish. It's too bad and it’s a good thing that we did not try their breakfast earlier. We would have wanted it every day, and it would have been too much food on top of everything else we have been eating.

At checkout, I was able to visit with Johanna again. She was so friendly when we checked in and again so today. At check in she told me that I reminded her of her family. Today she said that I reminded her of her mother. The family is part of the Sullivan clan. I am sure that I would want go be friends with Johanna if we lived in Cork. She gave me a blue ribbon for luck and safe travels blessed by St. Abigail. It took her a while to find the ribbon, then a bit longer to find working scissors to cut off my piece of ribbon, all the while the taxi driver waited patiently.

We picked up another car at the Cork airport that we will drop off in Dublin next Monday and drove to Adare for the night. At the airport, we saw that the passenger side of the car had lots of shallow scrapes on the fenders and bites out of the hubcaps. Phil went back to the Hertz counter to make sure those were noted on the record. (In the past, we’ve had to use our insurance to pay for other rental car dings that we didn’t do.) The person there sent us to the return lot for an inspection. There we met John and Mary’s son Alex who made good notes and emailed them to Phil. He was young and talkative and told us his parents were going to Adare today, too, and we should say "Hello" if we saw them.

Originally, we planned to take a long route to Adare to do some sightseeing, but yesterday we decided going to Adare would be enough. We got to the Dunraven Arms well before check-in time, but there was a young woman at reception who was happy to check us in and have us return after 3:30 to pick up our room key. I asked about a room upgrade since my membership in SLH provides one, if available. Sure enough, we had been upgraded to a junior suite. She also made us a dinner reservation in the hotel dining room for tonight.

We stopped for lunch across the street from the hotel at The Good Room then walked down to the Adare Heritage Centre to look around and to ask about visiting the 13th century Norman castle, Desmond Castle. It is shown by guided tour only starting at the Heritage Centre. We signed up for the 2:30 tour. When it came time, we found out that we were the only ones going at that time slot so we got a private tour with Ashlynne. We took a small coach to the gate of the castle where we got out for our walking tour. It was such a treat to have the place all to ourselves and to be able to ask all the questions we wanted.

The woman at the Adare Heritage Centre who set us up with castle tour tickets chatted in the usual friendly manner of many Irish people we have met. She knew the genealogist Maurice that Philip liked at the conference. While we were waiting for the tour to begin, we browsed the gift shops, and Philip found some shirts he liked. After the tour, we went back and bought two of them.

Dinner in the hotel at the Maigue Restaurant was excellent. So often meals are huge and that gets to be a problem eating out every day while traveling. Portion size here was perfect so we were satisfied yet didn’t feel too full.