The Garda, A Festival Tour, New Friends and More

Another busy day. I woke up to sunshine so decided to go to the Garda on my way to the Talbot Hotel car park where the meet up for the festival tour to Kilmore Quay was assembling at 10:30. I had a very pleasant young immigration officer who looked over my documents, took my fingerprints, gave me the direct debit form for €300 to take to the bank at which time she would order my residency card which would be good for a year. The last thing I had to do was do fingerprints on a computer and then sign. Everything went fine until trying to sign on the pad. Neither of us could get any mark to show up on the computer. I will have to go back in and try again. She will call me.

From there I walked down to the car park and met up with a dozen people or so and the leader of the group, naturalist Jim Hurley. I rode with John and Sara Gillespie and a man from Northern Ireland who was now living in Rosslare. The day was perfect, the little village charming and the naturalist was both knowledgeable and charming. I took a ton of pix, but having very little experience with phone pix (yes, I forgot my camera) I had parts of fingers in many of them. Here are a few that turned out.

Those are the Saltee Islands in the distance.

Lovely marina

Gotta love the sky and those rocks

And even more sky and rocks

Lots of seaweed on the beach

A lovely if precarious house.

After we returned to Wexford, I walked to the bank to take care of the residency fee then walked back home and got the mail. There was a check from my previous address in the states with a safety deposit refund. Yay!! I walked back down town and deposited it in my account. I then stopped into Eir to see if anything had been figured out on my bill and international minutes. Martina was there today. She was the person I originally worked out my contract with. She texted me later to say they were aware they had charged me too much and were making a credit to the bill and that even though the international minutes weren't showing up, I could be sure I had 50 minutes to use this month.

I wandered around for a bit and then realized it had been almost six hours since I had a bowl of Muesli this morning. I just happened to be outside Simon's again so I went in and John and Sara were there and invited me to share their table. They were almost done eating, and John had errands, but Sarah stayed with me and then we walked around a bit and did some shopping around for a bathing suit. Totally wrong time of year. She is a member of White's Hotel Leisure Club. She only uses the pool, but I want both the pool and the gym. I didn't bring a bathing suit with me, but figured I'd find one somewhere. She had part of her bill to pay so we stopped there on our way back home and I joined and they sell bathing suits there, €25. And you must wear a swimming cap there! So I got one of those too.

It was a good thing I do have international minutes because the insurance company in the states took a direct debit for the month of October for a little over $200. I had to call them and was on hold for about 20 minutes. It was finally discovered that even though I had called and cancelled, I didn't cancel both the dental and general insurance. For crying out loud. I will get a partial refund for canceling today.

I thought I could get back to the Garda to drop off the bank receipt showing I'd paid the €300, but the immigration officer was gone for the day. She will call me tomorrow and I will stop. I also didn't bring work out clothes with me, so I went to SportsWorld and bought two pairs of capri length workout pants and two tees for a total of €27 - a virtual steal! My salesgirl was quite friendly and her name was Niamh (pronounced Neev).

Sarah is interested in joining the TidyTown volunteers so I gave her number to Phil to see if she wants to  join us to plant daffodils near the graveyard on Rosslare Road on Saturday. I do like planting so much more than sweeping and picking up cigarette butts.

My back is almost completely better today. I think I will put some of the Voltarol on again at bedtime just to make sure. My weather app says it will be in the mid-50s tomorrow, but cloudy. I am hoping for another fabulous outing.

I had the Lamb Tagine for dinner again - lip smacking good!!

Hope all is well where you are,

Tata....