Radisson Blu, Rosses Point & Cream sauces

So I'm staying at the Radisson Blu in Sligo, which I had gotten a fabulous deal for on bookings.com (If I booked this room today I'd pay $149, but I only paid $75 when I booked this a month ago)

I wouldn't recommend it because of the type of people that stay here (business people with cars), but otherwise it's actually very nice. Just too bad they don't have rental bicycles.  I was told by one receptionist that the local attraction Rosses Point was a 20 minute walk away.  I'm not a slow walker, but after 45 minutes of walking, I could not even see the target!
I managed to take some decent pictures though ;-)

After walking for 45 minutes and still not seeing a beach, I decided to eat something in one of restaurants and to call a taxi afterwards. The eating establishment:

The view and the food (And YES: I needed two glasses of wine to cut through those cream sauces ;-)

Imagine there were NO CARS!

Seafood Chowder

Mussels

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I was starving and the food was good, so everyone was happy. Before the host called me a taxi, he warned me that the driver would charge me 10 Euros just to come out here from Sligo.  When a skinny Paddy in a huge SUV (Paddywagon?) arrived, he did do no such thing, and was a pleasant conversation partner as well, unlike the cabby who drove me from the train station to the hotel, who kept asking me whether I wanted to call him later, so he could drive me to the 'special places', where I could 'spend some money'.  After the second taxi brought me to the beach that I had hoped to reach on foot (only 15 minutes further by foot!)  and dropped me off at my hotel after asking me "Did you have a few?", I realized I had suffered the fate of the Germans already described by Heinrich Boell in his Irisches Tagebuch, namely I had developed a crush on Ireland and the Irish.

Rosses Point