What a brilliant, fantastic weekend 🙂
My other half had her birthday the week before so we decided to head away without the little ones for a weekend of as little as possible, not too far from the big city. The preferred destination a couple of times now has been Athlone. It wasn’t always that way – I once did a gig in the IT a few years ago and stayed in one of the older hotels in the town (which for legal reasons shall remain nameless.)
A group of four of us had the full 1950s “hotel room with branches grown across the windows in a room that had slanting ceilings that was obviously built in a crawlspace” experience complete with token brush with the resident escaped mental patient in the breakfast room the following morning. That was pretty much the best the town had to offer at the time…
We were lucky enough when we started the breakfast show to hook up with the extremely nice people at the new Radisson (hi Michelle!) They put us up a couple of times when we did shows down there, even gave us their bar for a full live show one morning with the army band and Mary O’Rourke and I liked the spot so much I’ve been back as a civvy…
So nice? I mentioned we were coming down for my wife’s birthday (she’d baked them a batch of muffins a while back after a confectionary conversation late one night in the restaurant) and what was in our room when we got there?
They even spelled it right and that’s a big deal in my house! Mmmmmmm……. Cake……..
Anyhew… Spent the rest of the weekend lounging around in the room sleeping, reading, watching movies, eating, drinking, luxuriating in the bath (!)
and making the occasional foray into the hotel bar. I know it night not sound very rock and roll (and to most of our friends who have yet to have families this sounds like a fairly typical weekend) but the one thing you tend not to allow yourself as a parent is time. On those rare occasions when you have the kids taken care of you feel the mad urge to fill your time away with everything imaginable from gigs to meals, drinks, shopping, walks, coffee, trips to museums…
Anything but just do nothing. And thus when the opportunity arises for you to do just that it can sometimes be the most fantastic time of all…
Only left on Saturday night to go to one of my favourite restaurants outside Dublin – the Left Bank Bistro. Had great garlic foccaccia to start, one of the most perfect Sirloin steaks I’ve ever had (smothered in garlic butter) and to finish? A brand new experience…
First you have the shot of Baileys (yum!), then you pour the fresh espresso over the vanilla ice cream and then you eat the mush that comes forth… And it was just perfect 🙂
Took a few photos from the room and of the gorgeous church in the centre of the town too; I’m obsessed with it – the room we were in faces onto it and you may as well be in Italy…
Also managed to read all of High Fidelity again at the suggestion of my other half and she’s right – it does resonate differently when you’re in your early thirties than when you’re in your mid-twenties… If you’ve never had the privelige then please, please do so – girls will come to understand how guys think, guys will just think “yeah, isn’t that they way everyone is…..?”
R