ireland - day 5

we started our day today at the kilkenney castle. this stitched photo doesn't do it justice ... but i tried. basically the castle is shaped like a huge U - the photo has you look directly at the center portion & then there's a wing of the castle coming out on each side towards you. it's huge. and very pretty. the inside, however, has been restored to its victorian splendor.

ummm ... victorian splendor? there's no boiling oil in victorian splendor.


you're not allowed to take photos inside the kilkenney castle. and we all know that marlana & i are not ones to break rules. however, if we HAD chosen to break the rules, specifically by not using our flashes to draw attention, we would have captured victorian rooms like this.


and this. yes, they're pretty ... but it wasn't what we wanted. we really wanted a medieval castle with stone staircases and a drawbridge. so we were disappointed. after leaving the castle we drove around town twice trying to find an old ruined church we could see ... but we never figured out how to get there, so we finally just left.


our day perked up when we made it to the rock of cashel before they closed. we were a little concerned katie was against us today, as she felt the need to take us down a very obvious one-lane road to get to cashel. it is very hard to drive with purpose & determination when you're rounding blind corners with no where to go if you meet another vehicle.


the rock of cashel has served a variety of purposes over the years: church, castle and now tourist attraction. ;) there is no roof on probably 98% of the structure, and there were flocks of black birds swooping about. it was all very alfred hitchcock.


and very beautiful. there were only maybe 6 other people at the rock when we got there, so photo taking was easy and we felt like we had the place to ourselves. this totally made up for the disappointing victorian castle.


from the cemetery yard we could see another ruined structure down the road. (can you see it in the picture? no? that's because it's not there. silly reader.) so we asked the gal working the front counter what it was and how to get there.


this is hore abbey.


another magnificent set of ruins.


the town of cashel was our star today. ;)

we headed back to adare and went to sean collins' pub for dinner. turns out he also owns the pink potato cafe next door (where we ordered take-away burgers sunday night), so we put in our order & one of the gals from next door brought it over. tonight i tried a smithwick's - brewed in kilkenney and much more pleasing than their silly victorian castle. :) we had a good time at sean's. sean (yup, actual owner running the bar) was a nice fellow and well, i already told you about the boston boys, right? we had fun. sean turned on the end of the championship rugby match, and he and the fellow sitting next to marlana proceeded to explain the game to us. it was fun. those guys are tough!

we also got a good tip for tomorrow. we're going to bunratty castle (about half an hour away) to see if it won't erase the disappointment of kilkenney. we told sean & the other fellow that we were thinking of driving up to trim (north of dublin) to see another castle ... and they both told us we were crazy, to just go to bunratty instead. we were avoiding bunratty as the rick steves' book told us it was just an over-commercialized potty stop. but can two locals really be wrong?

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'becca can't believe tomorrow is her last day in ireland!