Sunday & Monday, April 10-11, 2022 - Days 11 and 12

On Saturday night we did our own version of a Rostrevor pub crawl - pints and live music at Crawfords, pints at the Killowen Inn, we walked into the Cloughmor Inn and then back out again because the music would burst your eardrums, and ended up at our favorite place, Fearons. Pints and whisky all around and then we stumbled home.

We were slightly under the weather the next morning, and since Sunday was going to be a bad weather day for outdoor activities, we decided to go to lunch at Diamonds Restaurant again in Warrenpoint and then go to Bagenal's Castle Museum in Newry and finish up with shopping at Tesco.

We opted for the special Sunday pre-fix meal at Diamonds and it was everything I wanted and hoped for:

This is my idea of comfort food! See that gravy boat? That is the correct amount of gravy for my meal, mainly all of it. Diamonds isn't the kind of place that's going to give you a little drizzle of gravy on your plate, or a small ramekin of gravy, no! They know how to do a Sunday roast beef dinner. Don got the teriyaki salmon and I got the roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and they both came with the same veg - mashed potatoes, another serving of a small roasted potato, carrots, and shredded broccoli. Not shown was the the prawn salad as a starter. Everything was tasty, the vegetables were not overdone. and Don's salmon and my roast were tender and delicious. The Yorkshire pudding is essentially a tiny bread bowl and I ate it filled with gravy. There was also a small plate of whole wheat bread and butter, and a small dessert of sponge cake with whip cream, and shortbread cookies. We had to take half the roast and most of the potatoes home, that's a lot of food. 

Then it was on to Newry, braving the Sunday traffic to get to the museum. Which was closed. Most of the tourist pamphlets at the house were published pre-covid and the information for open hours is no longer valid, we should have checked the website. Here are a few pictures anyway:

Yeah, I know, not very castle like but the museum is supposed to be quite nice. Oh well, we'll save it for another rainy day.

Shopping at Tesco

I'm not good at shopping in unfamiliar stores where I don't know the layout, add shopping in a foreign country and it takes twice as long. We were at a Tesco Extra, which is a little like being in a Super Target for over an hour. Besides groceries there's clothing, household goods, light furniture, etc. Tesco in Newry was only open on Sunday from 1:30 to 5pm and was packed. It was a little overwhelming. 

The produce section was woefully picked over. I'm not sure how much Brexit is to blame for the poor selection but it took a bit to find decent salad greens and some fruit. 

Some things were shockingly inexpensive: a kilo of new potatoes was 49P (about 64 cents) and a jar of Dijon was 50P. Nuts are expensive and there was very little variety, only cashews, almonds, and peanuts. A 14oz bag of peanuts was 3.99 GBP ($5.20 USD). 

Coffee is very expensive.

One thing I didn't see at Tesco was any kind of sausage such as Italian, Polish, Kielbasa, smoked sausage, or even bratwurst. There is a dish I want to make and I settled for a ring of chorizo instead of Kielbasa or Italian sausage. Also, the sausage here (at least the breakfast sausage) is very different from what you buy in the US. They have a lot of "crumb" in them, that is bread. There is a package of pork sausages here in the fridge and the ingredient list states that it is 57 % pork, the second ingredient is crumbs. Maybe you have to go to a butcher to get meatier sausages?

I also couldn't find any fizzy water, you know, like La Croix or Bubbly. There was some flavored sparkling water in large bottles but they all had either sugar or aspartame in them, consuming cans of fizzy water must not be as popular here as it is back in the US. However, the Fever Tree brand seems very popular, I find it everywhere, and so I picked up a bottle of Fever Tree Sicilian lemonade.

Some liquors are less expensive, I picked up a good bottle of port for about 30% less than I would pay back home, and we've found decent bottles of red wine for about the same price or even a little less than what we would usually pay. 

Monday

The weather was good enough in the morning that we drove up to the Narrow Water Keep. It's also closed but we got some pictures:

There is also a Narrow Water Castle but that is now a hotel.