Ireland, Day Three: Cashel & Dingle

Each evening of the trip, I sat down with our map book and my iPad to figure out the route for the next day's driving. On our way from Kilkenny to Cashel, I learned the Google Maps part of this equation was going to be close to useless. All the speed limits in Ireland are outrageous - 80kph or even 100kph on tiny winding roads, which not even experienced Irish drivers would attempt - but Google doesn't know this, so it tells you the fastest route is to take the tiny yellow roads. 

Guys: Never, ever take the tiny yellow roads. Avoid at all costs. Most of them don't even have names; the instructions just say, "Turn left (700 meters). Turn right (1.6 kilometers)." and so on. This means you have to pay attention every second and correctly deduce what is supposed to be a road, and you never have any idea whether or not you're on the right track. Also you have to go really slow because you could come around a curve or across a hill to discover a car is approaching from the opposite direction in your lane, since there is only one lane, but two-way traffic. Basically it's the worst. But we didn't understand this yet. and it took foreverrrr to get from Kilkenny to Cashel, all through patches of the tiny yellow roads. 

After this experience, I only used Google to get the general idea, and then figured out an alternate route using major roads. This saved us so, so much time and stress.

Anyway, we did finally make it to the Rock of Cashel, the ruins of a fortress and church on top of a hill overlooking the countryside. The ruins there today date back to the 10th & 11th centuries, but there were kings there even before that.

This is the biggest building, the cathedral from the mid 1200s. With another older round tower as in Kilkenny.

There were a few tour groups here but one good thing about tour groups is that they tend to stick together, so for the most part if you wait them out they'll go on and you can have the place to yourself again. I was really worried planning this trip that we'd be too early in September and there would be too many people around; that week in Paris at Christmastime really scarred me for tourist overpopulation, I guess. There were very few people anywhere we went, though. It was very peaceful.

Here's Ben examining the Round Tower.

In retrospect this may have been our best weather day. Despite being high on a hill, the wind wasn't bad and it didn't rain on us at all.

The village of Cashel from up on the rock.

St. Patrick's Cross, from the 1200s. They have a replica outside but this is the real one, indoors to protect it from the elements.

 

We left Cashel and headed toward Dingle on the west coast. This was a longest driving day - it was supposed to be 3 hours from Cashel to Dingle but ended up being at least an hour more.

On the way there we passed a sign to alert us to an upcoming coffee shop, which then came up more quickly on our left than we expected. Ben braked hard to make the turn into the parking lot, forgetting about the near-uselessness of our terrible car, and it skidded out of control on the wet pavement. In those few seconds of helplessness I knew we wouldn't be killed, but I also had time to process what a huge pain in the ass it was going to be if we wrecked the stupid car - we had specifically declined the extra charge for no-deductible insurance coverage! - but at the last second the traction on the feeble tires kicked in, and we stopped about six feet from the wall. Right in front of this cute little place.

We went in and had Americanos and kept cracking up imagining what it would be like to be working in a cute bicycle-related coffee shop in the middle of the countryside when out of nowhere two tourists crashed their rental car into your place of business.

Refreshed and relieved to be safe & sound, we got back in the car and drove the rest of the way to Dingle, a small town on a peninsula on the southwest coast. Our  B&B had a lovely view of the water. This was our first real glimpse of the sea.

We went into Dingle to look around. It turned out to be another unbearably cute place. We ate a lot of that Murphy's ice cream while we were there.

They have a famous dolphin (Fungie) who has lived in Dingle Bay for decades now. He loves it when the tourist boats come out to see him - the boat operators don't charge you unless you see Fungie, but I guess you pretty much always see Fungie. We did not take a boat tour to go see him.

Dingle is a real fishing village too, in addition to being a tourist hotspot. We walked out on the pier and there were quite a few fisherman unloading their wares.

We ate dinner at John Benny's Pub, right there in the middle. It was a random pick but turned out to be a recommended place per our guidebooks, which we checked only later that night.

Ireland, Day Two: Kilkenny

Kilkenny was a late addition to the trip. My original plan for the first full day was to drive south to Kenmare so we could drive the Ring of Kerry, a popular coastal route with beautiful views but also lots of people. All the instructions for driving it give you tips for timing and routing to avoid tour buses. I was not at all sure this was a great plan, especially given that the rest of our trip was going to be focused on coastal scenery. Surely the Ring of Kerry couldn't be that much better than all the other things to come?

Then I met up with my cancer pal in Indianapolis and she told me Kilkenny was her favorite town in Ireland, and it was close to the Rock of Cashel, which I'd wanted to see. It looked to be about 2 hours of highway driving from Shannon, which seemed like a perfect way to break in the driving situation a bit. So, a couple of weeks before we left, I ditched the Ring of Kerry and booked us a night here instead. 

On the way there we stopped at the Barack Obama Plaza (a highway gas station) to get snacks. ??? I said, "Well, I guess there will never be a plaza named after Trump," and Ben said, "Molly. There already is." YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

The place we stayed  in Kilkenny was originally part of the Kilkenny Castle grounds, so this was a 2 minute walk away. We went there first to check it out.

It was sunny and 70 degrees. It's funny in retrospect how irritated we were by the good weather. I wanted cold and rain! We got too hot walking around this beautiful lawn and were crabby about it.

The castle was a proper castle, not a fortressy type place like Bunratty. It's right in the middle of town now.

It's so funny how they always save the biggest grandest room for the very end on the castle tours. This is the family art gallery.

We got some sandwiches in the castle tea room.

Then we walked around town, which was extremely cute.

I really couldn't get over how cute it was. Over the next two weeks, though, I was to discover most of Ireland's smaller towns and villages look pretty much like this. Some of them were drab and boring, but not very many.

We passed this place, a period house museum, by chance. Our favorite thing! It's Ireland's finest example of a Tudor townhouse.

It dates from the 1590s and was a series of three separate houses, joined by courtyards, going back off the street to a large garden at the very back. They were rich merchants.

The best thing about this type of minor museum is the random collection of objects they throw in. Like this skull from a Giant Irish deer, mounted at the height it would have stood in life. Look how huge that deer was! Its antlers are twice as tall as Ben.

They also had some mannequins dressed in some Tudor costumes, except one of them was very small for some reason, and one was wearing a plague doctor's outfit from the middle ages.

Chilling in one of the courtyards.

Here you can see along that wall they had a bunch of grain grindstones to tell you about how that all worked, even though it didn't have anything to do with the house itself.

No context. Just a dog skeleton.

In all seriousness, though, the Rothe House was super interesting and well done. The back garden has some tame ducks wandering around in it as well, which are always fun. We got too close to their little habitat and the ducks came over to intimidate us into leaving their water alone.

St Canice's Cathedral is the big old church in town, dating from the 1200s.

The big stained glass windows were destroyed by Oliver Cromwell and had to be recreated.

This is the first place we encountered a round tower at a religious site - these are all over Ireland, and are always the oldest part of the church complex (at least, all the ones we saw were). They seemed to all be from the 1100s. You could climb up this if you wanted but it looked horrible.

More of cute Kilkenny!

This is our hotel, Butler House. It was one of the top sleeping places of the trip, for sure.

We had a jacuzzi tub! Unfortunately we also left that window open when we went out to dinner and a million tiny gnats flew in, so we had to keep the bathroom door shut after that to keep them out of the bedroom.

Our very large, quiet room.

And a separate anteroom with another bed! I didn't remember choosing a giant room when I booked the place but I guess I did.

For dinner we went to the Kyteler's Inn, dating back to 1263. It seems hard to believe.

I'd forgotten how you get so many sauce choices in the British Isles.

I got a sampler of three local beers. The one on the left was the best.

It was a good place! But gives me that feeling of confusion as an American where our "old" stuff is from the 1800s. It's hard to tell what's real and what's kitschy.

 Kilkenny was great! A perfect place to start the trip.