South coast
We have voted Sneem as one of the best places we have stayed at so far. The people are as bright and dazzling as their houses. They have colour and are not afraid to use it! Our lovely host at Bank House greeted us exuberantly in the breakfast room but was bitterly disappointed that we would not be partaking of the full good ole Irish breakfast.
We set off south and in Glengarriff we came across a very unique ugly monster sign (see picture) for a sculpture garden. We pulled in to view the most delightful, inventive, artistic backyard full of interesting sculptures and children's games spread throughout the garden and house.
We stopped at a small town and went in search of food. Pub grub is usually quick and fairly decent but unfortunately this time, we chose very badly. We ordered a spicy chicken salad which arrived drowned in hot chili sauce with the majority of the "salad" consisting of raw onion. After we had spent half an hour picking out and scrapping off the edible bits we were wholly unsatisfied with the experience.
We continued driving east around the coast until we reached Kinsale but as it was only four o'clock we decided to continue north towards Cork. I had read somewhere that Cork offered very little in the way of interesting sights and as it was peak hour we decided to skirt around it all together. Just as we were entering Fermoy, we got caught up in a traffic jam and when we saw a sign for a B&B we pulled off the road and called it a day.
As my tailbone was now screaming in agony from the long day of driving, we left the car at the B&B and walked into town for dinner. Our hostess Helen had recommended Annie's Restaurant* which was a good half hour walk - just the exercise we needed. Unfortunately we arrived five minutes after they had closed the kitchen and we were unceremoniously turned away. Fermoy is not a tourist town and although we wandered around for a further half hour looking for another restaurant, we finally had to settle for take away fish and chips and meat pie. This whole day had been a very unsatisfactory food day.
*We have noticed on our travels around Ireland that instead of having names like "The Fox and Hounds" or "The King's Arms", all the pubs, restaurants and shops are named after people - in most cases I suppose, the proprietor. We have eaten in Murphy's, O'Connell's, Paddy's, O'Leary's and even Kennedy's pubs. The exception to this rule was spotted in Kinsale where a restaurant was called Posh Nosh but unfortunately it was not open when we passed.
[Posh Nosh is a British TV show parodying the pretentiousness of food connoisseurs - one of the funniest shows I have ever seen.]
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