Nothing like waiting until the last minute.
We arrived in Kilarney at our hotel and checked in around 5:00. The bus left for the performance at 5:30, we arrived downtown at 5:45, and we were on stage to perform st six o’clock, promptly. As Michelle put it, we had enough time at the hotel to scrub the moss off of our teeth! Keep in mind that it was Sunday night, and we had been traveling for approximately 30 hours straight at this point.
Pulling into the parking lot, our bus went to drop us off at the front desk for the quick check-in, scrub down, and outfit change. A person in a car decided that they didn’t feel like waiting for the bus to make the incredibly tight turn into the parking lot, and they nudged the front of their car directly into the side of the bus. It was one of those incredibly unintelligent and completely avoidable accidents that always seem to happen when you’re in a rush. Considering that the entire bus watched as the driver pushed their car forwards into the side of the 2-mph moving bus, they didn’t receive much sympathy.
Downtown Kilarney, at the festival, was amazing. There were hundreds of people, with street performers, face painting and arts and crafts for the kids, and all kinds of little booths and sales at the stores. We warmed up on the bus, kind of… As director, I was kind of counting on the adrenaline and the lack of time to think about the performance to carry us through…
You know how sometimes, when you don’t get the chance to think and to worry about a performance, the performance winds up rocking? That’s what it was like last night. The crowd was wonderful and was into everything that we sang – most of them stayed for a large chunk of the performance. The ladies were excited and energetic about the whole thing, and it came through in the music. The quartets did a great job.
After the show, we only had a few minutes to wander around, so I bought a small ice cream cone in a store advertising fresh made ice cream. Considering the number of cows that we saw during the day, I figured that there was a good chance of that! It was really quite good. I watched a street ventriloquist do his act right outside, and I saw a couple of kids get their faces painted like Spider-man.
Dinner was back at the hotel, and it was marvelous. Local beef and potatoes, a melon salad with strawberry compote, and little pastry puffs with fresh whipped cream… plus, the scenery was not to be believed. Our tour guide saved a prime seat overlooking the golf course, lake, mountains, and sunset for Donna, Amy, Katie, and me. Granted, it could have been the fact that this was the first real meal we had had in 36 hours after travel food, and it could have been the extreme exhaustion and performance adrenaline speaking, or it could have been the Guiness and a half that I had drank, but it was a truly amazing meal. (Side note: Guiness absolutely tastes different in Ireland than it does in the States. Wow. I am definitely not a beer drinker, but… wow.) (Side note #2: not a fan of the drink loosely called “coffee” out here. I might have to start drinking the tea.)
I am told that some people went out after that. Personally, I went back and went to bed. Tomorrow is a day spent touring followed by an evening performance downtown in Kilarney.
![[photo of a Christmas penguin quartet!]](http://www.soundsofpgh.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/christmas1.jpg "christmas1")
