The Visit Continues

Before I cover the rest of Mom and Dad's visit, I want to give an update on Kahlil's health at the time. As you recall, he had gotten sick and went to see the 'doctor'. When my parents arrived, Kahlil had a couple days left on his antibiotic run and his health was mostly better. During the day there were good hours and bad, he still had a little cough and congestion but in general he was doing ok.

The next couple days we stayed close to home. Mom had the name and key dates of her great grandfather. She wanted to see if there original documents available. Turns out he was born before they centralized records so we would have to know what parish he was a member of to get any more information on him. Mom and Dad also spent another day on the hop on / hop off bus. They hopped off at Kilmainham Gaol and Christ Cathedral.

Wednesday we loaded back into the car (sans Jay) and headed west for a couple nights. The plan was to spend one night in Galway and one night in Doolin or somewhere close to there. The drive over went well and we got settled into a great hotel right on the central square in Galway. All was going well until about 2am. Kahlil woke and started to moan and cry. He has done this before and just needed some rocking for about an hour until he went back to sleep. But in this case an hour wouldn't do the trick. He was awake about 15-30 minutes of every hour from 2 to 10. I wasn't sure what was going on but he seemed to be running a fever again. We decided to run the real test and I tried to give him some food. He wouldn't take a bite so I knew it was serious. All he would do was moan. The front desk directed us to a doctor across the square. She was a REAL doctor who checked his temperature, throat, and ears. He was running a high fever (over 103) and had a raging ear infection. She gave him ibuprofen and a prescription for a different antibiotic. By that afternoon he was feeling MUCH better.

Since it was late in the day, we decided to stay one more night in Galway. Mom and Dad walked around the city and did a little shopping. Dad found a beautiful sweater.

Finally we hit the road on Friday and headed south from Galway. We went down along the coast to Doolin. Everybody who has ever been there loved it so we had to go. I'm not sure if we were just there on a bad day or a bad time of year, but it seemed pretty much closed down. There wasn't much, if anything, going on. But we went there... yeah! Next we headed for the Cliffs of Mohr and didn't have much better luck there. It was so foggy we couldn't see much farther than about 50 feet. It was also damp and cold... not the best weather for an ear infection. So we decided to skip the hike up to the top of the cliffs and continue on our way. After a bit of debate, we stopped in Loughrea for the night. Not exactly a happening town, tourist or otherwise, but it had a hotel and restaurant. So Friday wasn't exactly a perfect day, but we did get a GREAT picture of a cow and some sheep :-)

Saturday we got home around noon. Mom and Dad had a couple last minute gifts they still needed to get so Kahlil stayed home with Jay while the three of us went out. Sunday we all headed to the National Museum. It was REALLY cool. There were artifacts from thousands of years ago. Lots of gold and silver and some gruesome ancient human remains. I highly recommend this museum. Sunday night Mom got their stuff packed - not a small task.

Monday morning the taxi showed up promptly at 7:30 and they were off to the airport. It was a great visit. I forgot to ask what their favorite thing was while here, but I have a guess. I think Dad would say the old churches, Dubliner cheese, and his sweeter. Mom would say EVERYTHING in particular spending time with Kahlil.