Restaurant: The Rowan Tree

I met my friend today where I usually meet her - The Rowan Tree Café, in Ennis.

We usually meet here for good reason. There's plenty of parking - just cross the footbridge from Abbey Street Car Park to the café. €1.30 per hour for parking, with a three-hour maximum. (Oh, and I believe they give 10 minutes grace.. certainly, times are not stringently enforced!)

We had a late lunch, and the place was fairly empty. We chose a corner table - wait to be seated, though. Chairs are deep and comfy. Service is obliging, and comes with a smile. The special was salmon goujons, which she had - I had the chicken and mushroom tagliatelle.

A large jug of water - with ice and lemon - was provided gratis, and we didn't have long to wait for our food. Pasta is filling, of course, which is the only reason I didn't clear my plate, as my friend did. The chicken itself was the highlight of my dish - succulent and delicious!

We finished off our meals with a chocolate (and walnut) brownie each - each of which came topped with a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream. Yum, in short. I'm always happy to eat there. And very impressed with the fact that, although we stayed for nearly three hours - long after we'd finished eating - and the room filled up around us, not once did we feel as though staff wanted us to leave.

Tomorrow, I'm meeting another friend for lunch, at the Cozy Cottage Café, in Sixmilebridge. And in the evening, my mother and I are off to Glór, for The Man in the Woman's Shoes, a one-man comedy show. On Saturday, we're headed to the University Concert Hall for Madama Butterfly, and I fly back to London on Sunday.

I had a flurry of booking for next week - on Monday, I'm headed to James I: the Key Will Keep the Lock, at the National. This is the first of the James Plays trilogy, about Kings James I, II, & III of Scots. Unfortunately, it's the last of them I'll have seen! But tickets are selling like hot cakes, as they say, for the trilogy, and this was the only date I could get for this one. I'm really looking forward to it - the others were excellent, and this is supposed to be the best of the bunch. At least I got a cheap Travelex ticket for each!

I booked that weeks ago, but only booked the rest last night. On Tuesday, I'm headed to The Marriage of Figaro, at the Coliseum. I'm in the balcony there, as usual, because that's where the cheapest seats are. However, I'm further forward than usual - I don't normally like to do that, because entry is at the top, at the back, and the stairs are steep, and there are no handrails, except along the walls. And I do have a problem with stairs. However, this seat is near the side, so I should be able to come down along the wall (with the rail), and then there's a pillar I can cling to.. I'm optimistic! And I've always been curious about that section.

On Wednesday, I've booked for Shakespeare: the Kings, at Cadogan Hall. It's nice and close to me, being a short walk from Sloane Square. The only time I was there before was with a free ticket from ShowFilmFirst. This concert sees the performance of the scores from the Olivier films of Henry V and Richard III, with inspirational speeches from Henry V thrown in for good measure! Mind you, while I was searching for ticket deals - I'd missed them, as I had for The Marriage of Figaro - the seat I was trying to book got itself booked by someone else. So I took the seat behind. Sadly, I discovered today that Hard Facade is playing a gig the same night - and I missed their last gig too, last Saturday! Never mind, some day soon..

Finally, on Thursday, Hallowe'en starts early for me, when I go on Necropolis: Journey of the Dead - a ghost walk through the tunnels underneath Waterloo Station. The origin of this walk lies in the true story of the Necropolis Railway, designed to transport cadavers to a large new cemetery far from the city. The London terminus was Waterloo..