Ireland - Day 2

I had breakfast with Dan this morning before he left for the office and then I headed to the fitness center here in the hotel.  I ran 3 miles on the treadmill.  When I got back to the room, I got dressed and then took a teeny-tiny nap. 

Dan said the second night is the night that he has a hard time falling asleep but I don't think that will be the case for me tonight.  I am already ready for bed!  I guess I'm a light-weight when it comes to adjusting for time differences.

Dan was able to come back to the hotel to pick me up for lunch but it had to be quick because he had to be back for a meeting at 1:30.

After lunch I walked around the town of Newcastle.  My first stop - the drug store, to buy pony-tail holders.  It is so windy today that I had to put my hair up and I normally only wear my hair up when I'm running or when I'm at the pool.   But this morning, I took a few steps out of the hotel and literally had to fight my way down the sidewalk.

And while I was fighting my way down the sidewalk, I realized that I couldn't see anything because my hair was covering my face.  So I had to give in and put my hair up.

In addition to being windy, it has been very cloudy today. It has also been rainy but I managed to do my touristy walk around the town between little rain showers.  Here are some shots from around Newcastle:

This is the Percy French - the restaurant we ate dinner at last night.

This is Villa Vinci - the cafe we ate lunch at yesterday.

This is "Around A Pound" - and yes, it's like our Dollar Tree!  Everything in the store was "around a pound"!

It's almost 6:00 pm now and hopefully Dan will be back here by 7:00.  He is supposed to be meeting with people from Germany and China tomorrow but the ash that is being spewed out by the volcano in Iceland was causing them to have trouble getting flights out of their respective countries on time this morning. 

I hope they get here so Dan's meetings don't have to get rescheduled to Friday - or even worse next week!  He does not need to be here 4 weeks in a row.  When we checked in on Monday a woman at the reception desk said, "Are you back?  Again?" 

Tomorrow I'm going to get adventurous - I might eat the black and white pudding from the breakfast buffet and I'm definitely taking a bus to Belfast!