Practicalities
For B&Bs around town try Mullac Na Si , Bishop St (tel 072/52702; GBP33-40/?41.90-50.79), Carrickboy House (tel 072/51278; GBP33-40/?41.90-50.79), across the roundabout in East Port, or Channel View (tel 072/51713; GBP33-40/?41.90-50.79), a little way down the road to Abbey Assaroe; others are mostly further along here or out on the Bundoran road. More luxurious accommodation can be found at Dorrian's Imperial Hotel (tel 072/51147; GBP70-90/?88.88-114.28) on Main Street, a recently refurbished eighteenth-century building whose facilities include a leisure centre and jacuzzi. The small but welcoming Duffy's hostel , a couple of hundred yards up the Donegal Road (March-Sept; tel 072/51535) has its own secondhand bookshop and camping facilities. Waterside camping is available at the Assaroe Lakeside Centre (tel 072/52822) off the R230 Belleek road. Bikes can be rented from the Erne Cycle Shop, An Mal, off Main Street. There are several reasonably priced restaurants for daytime eating, including Cuchulainn's on Castle Street, with its healthy portions of fast food, and the popular upstairs coffee rooms at Grimes Kitchen Bake on Main Street, where you can get marvellous fresh cakes and pastries. In the evening, check out Embers Restaurant , above Paddy's Bar , on Castle Street for seafood, pasta and vegetarian dishes, or try Shannon's Corner Bistro , at the top of Main Street, for reasonably-priced French-style cuisine. For something more exotic, head across the bridge for Mexican specialities at El Gringo . The best pubs in town are Sean Og's , with rock music at weekends, the modern Dicey Reilly's opposite, The Thatch pub on Bishop Street, with thatched roof and cottage-kitchen interior and traditional music most nights in summer, and the Old Distillery , on the bridge opposite the bus station. Most pubs have music on Sundays and you'll find folk song and ballads at the Corner Bar on Main Street. The hub of disco life is Dino's nightclub in the Assaroe Hotel , Main Street. As well as its August music festival , Ballyshannon has a number of other festivities worth investigating. An amateur drama festival of mainly Irish plays is held during the week of March 17 (St Patrick's Day); the Allingham Arts Festival for Writers takes place over a weekend at the end of November; and the town's traditional harvest fair celebrations around the middle of September draw crowds from the surrounding countryside. The rest of the time you can fill your evenings at the two-screen Abbey cinema in the Community Arts Centre, at the north end of town by the Donegal road. At BALLINTRA , four miles along the Donegal road, there's horse racing in the open fields on the first Monday in August.
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