Kilkenny: quaint little town with a castle, a big park, a river to walk down, and miraculously sunny weather (again!)
Saturday + Kilkenny: not enough time to do too much, but just enough time to have a quiet day outside of Dublin.
A bus to and from Kilkenny from Dublin cost €12 and about 4 hours round trip. So not a bad deal.
We drove past a LOT of green green green fields and trees on TINY curvy roads in a big ole coach bus. The Ireland driving is really quite scary and even if I could get used to the left side of the road, I don't think I could get used to the 3 inches of space between you and the next lane. It's obviously bigger than that, but not by much. And buses are much bigger than cars. Anyways, after careening through the country side we (Katy and I) got to Kilkenny and we just decided to stroll around for a while. All the 'big' sites of Kilkenny are very much within walking distance so we just meandered. So we got to the town and it was quaint so I decided it was worth a picture for all at home to see:
Also that car is driving on a two way street, if that gives you any idea to the size.
We walked around and looked at some shops, trying to delay the chance of ending up at the same castle as the obnoxious American teenager that was behind us on the bus. Two hours of loud, nasaly, obvious observations is grating. So there were some small businesses but mostly just bigger mall and store complexes. They aren't anywhere near the size of our malls in Minnesota, but they are just collections of chain stores. But it was still fun to walk around. The town of Kilkenny retained a lot of it's medieval street structure so there were fun little side alleys and walkways that led off to the left and right of the main drag to other little pedestrian areas.
After we were done walking around we decided to eat lunch by the river. Pretty river, pretty uneventful. There was a duck and her ducklings, but like I mentioned before, just mallards. And we all know what they look like.Finally we decided to head up to the castle. It cost €2.50 for a guided tour, which was going to be awesome. Except that instead we got a used sheet of paper with information about the rooms that we got to read ourselves. And we couldn't take pictures. Again. At the end, they had baskets to return the sheets. Yeah right. I pay for a guided tour, and get a guiding piece of used paper? I'm keeping it. It was a cool castle, like they all are, but the best part was the kitchen. In the kitchen they had the little call boxes, like in Cinderella with the bells. IF I had a tour guide I would have asked them how they worked! Instead, I had a sheet of paper that said the kitchen had two call boxes and one was bigger. Woohoo. But here's the outside:
It's actually the back because I couldn't get the front all in one picture unless I went 50 yards down this park in the front:
But overall a good experience.So the last two things we did or happened to us were what I would consider more traditionally 'Irish,' rather than Irish tourist. First, we went to a gift shop because EVERYTHING is cheaper outside of Dublin (that's not one of the Irish things). The owner or operator of the store was very friendly. Not overly friendly, just an inquisitive shop keeper. But I got three nice and inexpensive gifts. While he was talking to us we told him we were looking for a pub to watch the Irish-English Lions rugby match against the South African Springboks. Katy plays rugby so she had been dying to see a match and I had never seen one and wanted to sit and watch a game in a pub. So he told us about three very distinct types of pubs, all within a 5 minute walk of his shop (that's the Irish thing). So we went around the corner, peeped in two, decided on the first one, had a pint and enjoyed the match (that's the other). It was excellent, with some gouged eyes, but unfortunately the Lions lost, but under unfair circumstances I think.
A good day, a few pictures, and some stories.
Lastly, walking around today I saw the Dublin tribute to Michael Jackson, which I'm sure you are all as sick of hearing about as I am. But he did make excellent music.
"The day the music died."
"The day the music died."Also:
Billy Mays
Farrah Fawcett
Ed McMahon
Rest in peace
Later,
Anna
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