We had another tiny car . . . everyone knows the term for the new smart living quarters, "tiny house". Well, these are "tiny cars" but they must be because there are only "tiny roads" here. We headed to Cong.

The Quiet Man was filmed in 1951, only two years after Stan was born. It's setting, the town of Cong, has virtually thrived on the fact that the movie took place there. For years and years fans from all over the world have and still do come here to see where this famous movie was created. Plus, it was the movie production team who enabled electricity to be brought to Cong. Prior, the people of Cong had no lights.

Yes, the village is a dreamily beautiful place where the River Cong forks into two separate streams. One branch sweeps around one side of the village of Cong and the other branch goes underground, then emerges and joins its sister branch once again to make the town a virtual island. If you listen carefully, the sounds of moving waters of the River Cong can be heard from almost everywhere in the town. Cong overlooks beautiful meadows; it has stone bridges crossing the river branches, it still has houses and inns built in the 1600's and it has the ruins of a 12th centtury monastery; yet it is a very small hamlet. It has a castle, too, the Ashford Castle, perhaps one of the most famous, well-preserved and expensive castle-hotels in the world today.

We bought ourselves a tour map and walked the entire route, checking-off spots where major scenes in the movie took place. The City of Cong posed as the set of two fictitious towns in the movie, Innishfree and Castletown--but in reality they were only feet apart. The buildings that were shown as pubs and significant houses in the movie are still there. I found it interesting that the actors and film crew actually stayed at the Ashford Castle while filming but John Wayne frequently went into town to drink with the locals at Ryan's Bar.

Although we could not enter the castle - we were not guest-residents and we had no reservations for afternoon tea. We were permitted, however, like most tourists, to tour the immense and finely manicured grounds. Several important scenes from the movie were filmed on the castle estate.

Along the top of a certain stone bridge was a rugged old rusting handrail - we imagined . . . surely John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara touched this metal 66 years ago. We laid our hands on it.

We had a lunch of seafood chowder and heavy Wheaton bread at the Crow's Nest then drove back to Galway, taking the scenic route along the Wild Atlantic Way.

As we re-entered Galway from a new direction, we saw a whole different scene from Old City Center, the tourist spot we first encountered yesterday. The area we passed today is where the real people live and guess what; it looks very much like the places where people live in the USA. There are ordinary but nice-looking neighborhoods, there are lovely, expensive-looking houses built into the hillsides overlooking the Atlantic, and there are clusters of what might be vacation homes offering a weekend or vacation reprieve from the hectic life city folk live during the week . . . just like home.