Surprised to See...

I need to catch up with my photos. We had someone for dinner yesterday, and today I went into town after work to try to get all my book presents. Chapters were giving a €5 in-store book token for purchases over €50, which was a nice surprise. At last I think the snow is one the way out - one more cold night forecast. There was a surprise snowfall last night - it took C about twenty minutes to get the car clear to take Hana back home, as there was ice on the insides of the windows as well as outside.
Anyway, none of that was surprising. What was was this seal that I saw on Monday morning. It was so cold (-5 or 6 C, about 23F) that my glasses were all steamed up as I walked along the Liffey, but I could see a shape bobbing up and down that looked too big to be the cormorant, and also wasn't staying down long enough. When I got closer and got my glasses un-steamed, it was a seal. I was disappointed that I only had a wide-angle lens on the camera, so I couldn't get very good pictures, but it was lovely to see. Back in the summer when I saw all the shoals of mullet, one of the guys in work said he thought he'd just caught a glimpse of a seal out of the corner of his eye, but they certainly don't often come this far up the river. That's quite some sizeable looking fish he has, too!

This last picture is actually one I took quickly just before I left the house on Monday. It's amazed me, at night it's so light with all the snow on the ground and the snow clouds, but in the mornings before the sun is up it's so gloomy and dull and overcast. If my leg muscle that I damaged last summer hadn't just recovered from the walk last week, I'd have got off the bus and walked through Phoenix Park yesterday, it looked just beautiful. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valour, though, and at least I was rewarded with seeing the seal.