We slept in a bit more than planned in Dublin, recovering after a long flight and day (and it was wonderful). As soon as we dragged ourselves out of bed, though, we were on our way to the first stop of the day, Kilkenny. It was a pretty drive as we got ourselves used to driving on the left side of the road again, and we enjoyed that most of it was along a highway for easy driving! In Kilkenny, we eventually found parking and wandered through a stereotypical Irish downtown, full of pubs and shops in an old medieval style building, leading up to Kilkenny Castle in one direction and the St. Mary's Cathedral in another. We hadn't left ourselves a whole lot of time in the city, so we spent a bit over lunch/breakfast in a pastisserie, went on the Smithwicks tour (much more interesting than the Guinness tour, even though Guinness owns Smithwicks now) and wandered through the streets for just a bit before taking off for our next stop. This town felt comfortable (at least, once we parked!) although the stone buildings and cobblestone streets certainly made it feel interesting and exciting. Had we been here longer, we would have toured through the castle and the cathedral, and spent some more time just enjoying the city walks. When we first arrived at 11 am, almost everything was closed and quiet - by the time we left lunch and our brewery tour around 1:30, it felt like the city had started to wake up, just as we started to go.
The next stop was the Rock of Cashel, a huge old castle. We had allocated ourselves a few hours for this stop, and since there wasn't a convenient tour time, ended up going through the whole castle very quickly! It is huge and impressive, but largely a ruin and without a whole lot of reading material or interactive things to keep us there. We walked through most of it very quickly, took pictures, and largely found what we were impressed by was the sheer scale of the huge stone walls and towers. To fill the time, we wandered through the town and found a nice little ice cream shop!
Finally, we ended our day in Kinsale, another small town, this one right on the coast south of Cork. It's a picturesque little town full of brightly colored shops, a huge number of restaurants and a cute harbor full of sailboats. Kinsale seems to be a relatively tourist-driven town, but one that makes their tourism living simply by being clean, pretty and simple. There's not a whole lot to do and see besides bright colored, well kept shop and restaurant buildings lining the harbor, and a big old church and tiny castle to walk by. It's another version of a stereotypical Irish town, one to relax in and enjoy a pint and some fresh fish rather than running from attraction to attraction. Our B&B is beautiful and we have very friendly hosts, who led us towards a great seafood restaurant and a pub with traditional Irish music where we spent a fair amount of our evening. (Great scallops, monkfish and smoked mackerel - but even fresh, we learned quickly we're not fans of mussels. To reward ourselves for being adventurous and trying them, though, we had to finish off with sticky toffee pudding!) When we walked back late, it was quieter and darker than I've experienced in a long time - not even crickets or frogs singing, and the stars were brilliant. While it would have been great to have a bit more time to both Kilkenny and Kinsale, we've been thrilled to see each of these places!
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