I can not believe how dark it stays in the morning! Set the alarm for 8 AM and when we woke up it was still pitch black outside. The sun doesn't come up til around 9-9:30. Nuts. Had another less-than-stellar shower (the water pressure just blows- I still have conditioner in my hair) and headed over to tour the castle. Unfortunately Irish tourism isn't as eager to open as we were to get out of bed so we had to kill some time before the castle opened. Walked around, grabbed a muffin for breakfast, took some pics, and checked email.
The castle tour was interesting. The same family, The Butlers, lived in the house for 500+ years. They have recreated a few of the rooms and still have some of the original furniture so we took a tour of the rooms. The girl who led the tour had a super annoying voice. It was really fake and rehearsed sounding. Eww. Drove me nuts.
Decided to go ahead and buy a heritage pass for 21 euros (well, only 8 euros for me. Thank you SLU student ID with no expiration date!) We have several heritage places we plant to go to so hopefully it will save us some money. Skipped the Smithwicks brewery in order to get on the road sooner. The Rock of Cashel was listed on our Heritage Pass, so we toured there on our way to Kinsale, our next stop. Stopped at a gas station for some snacks and I made the mistake of asking for directions from 2 old men who worked there. The directions they wrote out made no sense at all, plus I could barely understand a word that they said. We opted to find our own way there rather than use their state-of-the-art road map.
Rock of Cashel is pretty much some ruins of church monestary. It was really pretty, but not particularly interesting. The craziest part was how incredibly WINDY!!! it was there. We tried to take pictures and video to show just how windy it was, but they just don't do it justice. We're talking practically being blown away. Unbelievable. We had to pay 3 euros to park, so we decided to make the most of it and walk down into the town. Bought some shampoo, conditioner, and body wash, since I stupidly left all those items in the shower in Kilkenny. Grabbed some sandwiches for lunch and then drove onto Kinsale.
Kinsale is a harbor town on the southern edge of the coast. It is apparently the closest port to mainland Europe. It has a lot of Spanish influence to it. Our 1st stop was to a bar called The Spaniard (how appropriate.) We read that they play music there on Wednesday nights, but unfortunately not that night. After a pint there we tried to find a room in that area. I ran into what I thought was the Harbor Lodge, but was in fact the Harbor Bar, to check room rates. Obviously not a B&B, but I did have a lovely chat with Tom, the bartender, who was probably going crazy with boredom seeing as he and I were the only 2 people there.
We were on the side of the harbor called Scilly. Not a lot of luck finding a place there, so we drove over to the town and found a B&B called Olde Bakery. It was in our Lonely Planet book so we decided to check it out. The B&B is owned by a very nice couple, Tom and Chris. 40 euros per person with breakfast included. Tom showed us our room, gave us the key (again- nothing needed from us), took our breakfast order, and we were off in search of dinner.
Kinsale is pretty dead in the winter and it was rainy and windy so not many people were out. Found a restaurant called Dino's and both had Fish-n-chips (again). After dinner we walked thru a "casino"- a building with lots of slot machines. Tried to find a bar with music (I thought I heard music at one point...but it was actually the wind blowing over empty kegs in an alley- music to some peoples' ears!) but settled for a pint and a glass of Baileys at a placed called Armada Bar. A very quiet, but nice evening in Kinsale.
No comments:
Post a Comment