Ruins, or Ireland Day 3

 We were off to an early start. When you travel and are 8 hours off your usual schedule, sometimes your body isn't quite sure when it is time to sleep and when it is time to wake up. We arrived at Rock of Cashel a good hour before tours started. There was a film we could watch in an indoor space about the history of the Rock of Cashel-- how it started out as a castle for kings and then was granted to the church. It became a mishmash of buildings jumbled together and has the only Romanesque frescos left in Ireland after Cromwell came through. The film seemed like the best choice since the wind was out to play and the sunshine was playing hide and seek.  We were told later that they have a lazy wind at the Rock of Cashel. It refuses to go around, so it'll go right through you. And it does, way up there on the limestone outcropping.

St. Cormac's Chapel: 

With what is left of those original frescos:

Once we had been around those ruins, we walked down the hill to Hore Abbey. This one was free, but you risked stepping in cow pies to get there.

Ryan was the only one who had to bend to get through this doorway.

You can see the Rock of Cashel in the background.

Once we'd had our fill here, we drove to the Athassel Priory. This is a tricky place to get to. If you plug in "Athassel Priory" into Google Maps, it takes you to a nice view of it from the wrong side of a river. But, once a tiny piece of information clicks in Mom's brain about "Oh this is the one you have to type 'Athassel Priory ENTRANCE' into Google Maps to actually get there," then things go more smoothly. After that pesky 10-minute drive to go around.

Then it was through another cow pasture we go! There was a metal gate to latch to make sure the cows don't get into the ruins.

I think I want a cool stone castle ruin in my pasture...

I find all of the ruins littered around Ireland haunting and sad. So much history crumbling all around! The Irish and poor British in me shakes my fist at the aristocracy in Britain for their terrible idea to tax roofs and windows. If a landowner had a building they no longer wanted to pay taxes for, they would pull off the roof. One Irish gentleman we talked to said they had a saying in Ireland about "stealing daylight" or "daylight robbery" because you had to pay to have window space (with or without glass) in your home.

Then it was about a two-hour drive to the town of Killarney. Ryan was worn out from driving at the end of the day.

Ireland Day 2 continued

Moving on from Dublin.

We stopped at Duckett's Grove on our way to Kilkenny. Once upon a time, it was a massive estate belonging to very rich, influential people. Sadly, it was burned in the 1930s.

The gardens are still kept up, but sadly not much to look at in early April. At least they are green.

We arrived at Kilkenny to tour the castle there. It was the longest continuously occupied castle in Ireland- around 800 years. It did sit abandoned between 1935-1967, with all of the contents auctioned off so anything in the castle now is not original. But with hidden scraps of wallpaper, paint, and records of carpets and drapes purchased have allowed the restoration people to get close to the Victorian version of the castle.

This toilet was installed before a visiting royal's sojourn. The tour guide called it the Royal Flush.

I thought this stair case was both colorful and different.

Now THIS is a gallery wall. In its heyday, the walls had so many more paintings.

This was a fortress castle in Norman times, but then remodeled in Victorian times to make it feel less... fortressy.

I have a close up photo of the kids on the stairs below. However the sun was positioned in the best way to give the kids squinty eyes. So, we'll stick with the broader view.

Then we traversed the city streets. We found the medieval Butter Slip Street. It looks like it belongs in a Dickens or Harry Potter movie.

That fancy wooden door is totally fake. It was painted.

This, if I am remembering correctly, is St. Mary's Cathedral.

More ornately carved, tiled, and painted spaces, with gorgeous stained glass windows.

The sanctuary was walled off. But when a church worker noticed I was enthralled, he lead me around to the side and let me in so I could take pictures. He was so kind! It was stunning. 

We ate dinner at a pub, then headed to Rose Cottage for the night. All of the old buildings have THICK walls. I insisted someone stand next to the wall for perpective. The outside walls were a good 3 feet wide.

Isn't it cute?

The center section was the original cottage. It was remodeled before becoming an Airbnb. This one had the most interesting bathroom situation. The shower was tiled on two sides, there was a glass wall on a third, but the 4th side was just... open. The shower head was pointed at the glass wall, but the toilet was well within spraying distance on the open side. It was a small bathroom (like all bathrooms that we saw there). But at least we had hot water. This was a major improvement.

Dublin, days 1 and 2

 Once we landed in Dublin, we got into the "queue" to get through customs. It took a long while to get through the line. We were deemed acceptable to enter the country. We picked up our rental SUV, which was a Ford Kuga. How do you pronounce "Kuga" anyway? KOO-guh? Koo-GAH? It was a hybrid, so we were electric in town and gas-powered other times. The sad part is that the radio/back-up camera/phone charger/screen and console was somehow rendered completely blank and useless. A backup camera would have been really, really nice. We couldn't play anything over the speakers. It was a really good thing I purchased an external battery charger so we wouldn't bleed Ryan's phone dry when using Google Maps. Google Maps is a MUST.

Driving away from the Dublin airport is a trial by fire. You drive on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road, with narrow roads and tons of traffic-- straight into your first roundabout going the wrong way. The fact that there isn't a monument to bad driving right there at that intersection is a miracle.

We drove right to our Airbnb to drop off the car. We were super tired from a mostly sleepless night, but the rush of being in Ireland and wanting to make the most out of our trip had us traipsing the streets of Dublin to St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Now we head into a picture dump of gothic architecture because I am in love. 

The kids did some brass rubbings.

Our tour guide told us a story about Jonathon Swift, author of Guilliver's Travels. He preached sermons at St. Patrick's Cathedral, going on for 4 hours. He had a mobile pulpit, and if he saw someone snoozing during his sermon he would have someone wheel him over so he could shout down at the sleeping parishioner to wake up. Maddie liked his death mask.  

This was a Fitzgibbon. Not a relation, but he did have the same surname as I did once upon a time.

Also, I embraced the fanny pack. I kinda like it. 

We walked by Temple Bar on our way back to our condo for the night. I had to take a picture even though we had no intention to drink.

This was a Georgian house. It has all of the moldings and fancy things.

Our apartment was on the top floor. 5 flights of thigh-burning stairs up! (Only 4 if you came in through the front door.) Speaking of-- floors are numbered differently. A floor at the street level is the "ground floor" and the one up from that is the first floor. That's a little different than the US.

Elizabeth got bounced back and forth between hide-a-beds and a twin bed in a bedroom shared with the twins on this trip. She started out on a hide-a-bed.

Elizabeth's view of the kitchen.

I want to talk about the electricity situation in Ireland. Every single outlet has an on/off switch. And each appliance gets switched off when not in use. But it is a guess which switch goes with which appliance.  In this place, we could not figure out two things: Which switch would turn on the dishwasher, and how to turn on the hot water heater. We had no hot water. Annie and Maddie opted for super quick, icy showers, but the rest of us opted for a wet washcloth "bathing." Every single place we stayed in had complicated showers involving string pull switches from the ceiling, power buttons, sometimes no shower doors or curtains, or other odd things.

We slept pretty well, and then it was off for more sightseeing!

The view from our apartment.

The Ha'Penny Bridge over the river Liffey.

We walked to Trinity College to check out the Book of Kells and the Long Room library. We couldn't take pictures of the actual Book of Kells, but there were plenty of displays to check out before seeing the actual book. The amount of work into each picture and line of text is astounding. Many of the capital letters in the text are illustrated beautifully. The lines of text are so, so even- something well out of my capabilities.

Then to the Long Room library. It was pretty amazing.

Trinity College is in the process of boxing up all of the books and statues to get ready for a 3 year long renovation beginning in October. It was still spectacular. 

I found a tweed "Grandpa hat" in the gift shop. I couldn't convince Ryan to buy it, but at least we got a picture.

Then we were off to Dublin Castle. We took the guided tour, so we could see the medieval parts and the chapel. More gothic revival style... I would love to go to church here. The organ pipes are even painted.

Of course, I may not ever pay attention in church if my eyes are constantly taking in the decor.

Then we were let loose to enjoy the self-guided portions of the castle.

You can see the Lady Justice statue above Annie's head. There are a couple of interesting, non-traditional features about this statue. One: She faces towards the castle, not the community. Two: She is not blindfolded. Three: The scales she holds will tip literally towards the tax office when it rains. Our tour guide told us the saying about this particular Lady Justice: "The Statue of Justice, well mark her station, her face to the castle, her [hind end] to the nation!"

We picked up sandwiches for lunch at a SPAR corner store, and then stumbled across this little Turkish bakery and grocery store. They had really yummy pastries that were way better than our premade sandwiches.

Then it was time to leave Dublin. We got back to the place we had stayed the night as we had permission to leave the car there even though we had checked out officially. I think door knobs in the middle of doors are hilarious. But not out of the ordinary there.

Our street was quite busy. We wandered down to see what all of the fuss was about and lo and behold, they were filming a movie. Word on the street was that Anthony Hopkins had been spotted the day before and they were filming a movie about Sigmund Freud in his later years. I don't know that we will ever watch the movie, but hey, we were there!!

One of the old vehicles being used for props didn't actually work after being unloaded from a trailer on our alley way. To get out of our parking space, Ryan had to help push it out of the alley and into the street so we could get out.

I left all of the driving to Ryan. He was a trooper and we took the car back to the rental place unscratched. I played the part of navigator on this trip, which is a less difficult job but also pretty demanding. We even sprung for the way more expensive automatic transmission. Ryan made do with a standard on our last trip, but the automatic was so much better.

One more thing about Dublin. The smell of cigarettes, cigars, and vaping pens is EVERYWHERE. I have never seen so many vaping devices. They were all shapes, sizes, and colors. And I am not sure what was in all of them-- some smelled a bit funky. I'm so glad the good ol' US did the whole campaign on the health effects of all that because it seems so much less prevalent, at least where we live.