April 18th

I'll get on an airplane about 10PM on the 18th, and arrive the following morning at Shannon Ireland. Now here is the difficulty. Evidentally the ONLY thing in Shannon is the airport. So the closest place to stay will be Limerick. I figure that while I will be landing that morning, I'll be about as ready to sightsee as a bowl of oatmeal. When you look at the city of Limerick on the web (the closest place to Shannon where you can jump on a train), they show you this picture of Limerick.

Now the swans are pretty, but fore the rest of my life, when I think of swans, I'm going to think about how I almost killed one when in England. In England the Queen owns all the swans. I had the habit of getting bread and saving it to feed to the ducks and swans when we went places. I had a whole croissant in my hand and piece in my right hand to feed a swan. Instead of going for the piece of croissant in my right hand, the swan grabbed and got the nearly-whole croissant out of my left hand. The swan proceeded to choak it down. It got stuck in its gullet, and I thought for sure I was watching a swan croak. Fortunately it managed to get the croissant down, and I was saved from likely being arrested for killing one of the Queen's swans. So, while the look pretty, remember swans are BIG birds, and they are greedy. I do mean greedy! I don't know if the Queen owns the swans in Northern Ireland (Limerick is in the South, Eire), but if she does, she can be assured that I'll be much more careful with feeding them this time!

Now have a book on Ireland (thanks Kris) and so am excitedly trying to figure out what I want to see and make a schedule that will work with my time constraints. Getting very excited.