Cemeteries and Butter Tarts - Day 3

I awoke this morning to blessed rain, a thunderstorm, and much cooler temperatures.  Of course, I had left my rain jacket in the car.  Planning.

Breakfast was a little off.  Ham and eggs sounds like pretty standard fare, but this ham was more like Spam, obviously pressed, very salty.  Another culture thing?

My post breakfast goal was to find that missing cemetery.  Three maps plus GPS coordinates and I still had to stop and ask a human being at the township office where the bloomin' cemetery was hiding.  Fortunately, I was able to find the township office with its requisite human.  And I got to meet the official Carlow Township cat.  Very friendly little fellow, albeit a bit damp.  The cemetery?  Oh, just down the road.  Eureka!

I walked the entire cemetery (very wet, but the rain had stopped and the sun hadn't yet appeared) and took lots of pictures.  My head is now quite lumpy from some little bugs that seemed to like my hair.  No bites anywhere else.  Go figure.

This cemetery has its own personal church, or vice versa.  I'm always puzzled why churches are so often locked up.  Isn't a church exactly the kind of place that should be freely available?  After traipsing through the cemetery, I tried the church door and, to my surprise, it was open.  Inside was a quaint little sanctuary adorned with simple stained glass windows.  As churches go, really nice.

On my way back to Maynooth, I decided a celebration was in order.  Butter tarts.  They are sold singly and by the half dozen.  Most folks seem to go for the half dozen.  After I bought and ate my one, I understood the need for a half dozen.  A butter tart, if you've never had one, is about the size of a small muffin.  In fact, it is baked in a muffin paper.  But it's a tart, think tiny pie.  The crust is a cross between flaky pastry and shortbread, less dense than shortbread, more dense and thicker than pastry.  Really yummy.  The filling -- oh, the fillings:  fruits and creams (like pie fillings), cranberry, maple walnut, pecan, plain, to name a few.  There must have been at least a dozen different flavors.  After much deliberation, I tried pecan, which was far superior to any pecan pie I have ever had.  The filling was silky smooth, warm and creamy and, of course, all the pecans had floated to the top.  The butter tart certainly made up for the breakfast spam.

I also learned why the moose are chained to the porch:  to keep them from being stolen.  Even here.  I. am. crushed.