The Castles of Ireland

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We woke up and got on the road heading towards Kilkenny.  We stayed mostly on the motorway, where driving on the left side of the road was not an issue, but we did take some of the infamous Irish narrow twisting turning one lane roads.  For people who have not seen these they are roughly 1.5 cars wide worth of paving.  Lining at least one side is a wall or hedge that looks like a wall from three to ten feet high.  The shoulder separating the wall from the road is barely wide enough for a person to walk down.  While this is not like the movies would have you believe where around every corner there are sheep covering the road, it is not enterly animal free either.  When you meet up with a car coming the other direction, by the time you figure out how you would let them around you they have already backed into a driveway or two a wide part of the road to let you pass.

We arrived in Kilkenny and found a parking spot downtown near a resturant that specialized in wings and an internet cafe, so we could take care of the essentials before we left.  We walked through the historic center of town, heading towards the castle.  The Kilkenny Castle has been rebuilt and modified a number of times through the years.  The latest change, turned it from a true castle into something more like an English Mannor.  So as you walk up from the town side, there is the impressive four corner tower look, but as you enter you realize one wall has been removed to provide a view over the castle garden.  The tour was interesting, but showed very little about the start of the castle and focused mostly on how people lived here for the 400 years after it was converted to a mannor.

After visiting the castle, we walked to some of the other historic buildings in town such as the many churchs and cathedrals.  And down through some of the old town squares.  It was very interesting to see how the town has just grown around these old buildings.  Walking made us a little hungry and since we have not had real chicken wings in a long time, we decided we should check out the wing resturant.  It turns out that this was just a Pizza Hut in disguise, because it was owned and operated by them.  Instead of featuring Pizza and offering wings, they featured Wings and offered Pizza.  They were still good, but it was a little funny.

That afternoon we drove to Cashel, were we found a B&B to spend the night.  Since we learned at the Cliffs of Moher that good weather is not guarenteed we headed out to the Rock of Cashel to try to see it.  Unfortunately it was already closed for the night and extremely windy so we only walked around it for a short time before headed to town to get some food.  We ended up spending most of the evening at the internet cafe before we grabbed some takeout food and headed back to our B&B for the night.

The next morning we had another day of great weather and we again headed to the Rock of Cashel.  This time we were able to explore the ruins of the Castel turned Cathederal where St. Patrick preached his message of Catholism and convert the first king of Ireland.  The wall is still pretty much complete, but inside the wall the main building is little more than crumbling walls surrounded by a graveyard full of grave stones in the shape of the Celtic Cross.  What makes this a memorable sight is its location perched atop a large rock sticking up in the Irish country side.  From the top you get amazing views out over the patch work of green fields.

After completing our visit to Cashel by walking around the town a little, we headed to Cahair to see another castle.  This is was the best preserved of the castles that we were able to go through because it was not in ruins like Cashel and had not had a major renovation into an English Mannor.  It was situated on a small island in the middle of the river running through town.  On each bank of the river there was a number of churchs and manors once belonging to nobles that gave the town a very nice small town feel.  We toured through the castle walking along the walls and up to the top of the keep to get views out over the town.  While we had a good time exploring the torture musuem inside one of the towers, we decided that it is a good thing that we live today because we problably would have confessed just by seeing the devices that they were going to use to torture us.

That afternoon we stared our drive to Northern Ireland.  Driving around my old home in Ireland, Limerick.  We eventually stoped at Bunratty Castle with the hope of finding Michelle a scarf before we got to the windy northern coast.  We did not go in Bunratty Castle as it was just starting for its nightly conversion to a resturant, but we did see the well preserved large square keep from the outside.  That night we decided to spend the night in Sligo, and head out to Northern Ireland the next day.

Bill