Ireland Day 2 Cont'd: Kinsale

Our next stop on the zigzag tour of SW Ireland was Kinsale. Another little port town, well known for it's wonderful restaurants and quant atmosphere.

We got to Kinsale early in the evening, and it was obvious there was some event going on in town and at the marina. Which we has expected when we had encountered so many problems booking a guesthouse for the night. And explians why we wound up in the smallest bedroom ever encountered outside of Manhattan. As you can see, you really couldn't get around the bed by walking. This photo is of the entire room.

So, after we checked into our very basic, itty bitty room at the guesthouse, we walked down toward the marina. Passing the Seafarers' Memorial,

and Merlin's Keep (ok, not really anything but someone's guesthouse, probably - but Sarah thought it was amusing).
Eventually reaching Vista, this lovely little wine and tappas joint by the marina.
This little wine bar was so cute, and obviously had it's own little happy hour crowd (that's them, behind David).

After a little bite to tide us over, not to mention a few glasses of wine, we wandered back into the downtown area to find a restaurant for dinner.

Those of you who know David well know that one of his great loves in life is a fine meal. And more than that, he loves to check out menus online of everywhere we may go to eat. Planning a night out for dinner can involve serious research for him. Naturally, he had looked into restaurants in every town we had booked into on our journey. And he had lists (ok, only in his head, but still) of his top 5 places to go for meals - as well as for drinks before and after. We tried a few places he'd scoped out, but unfortunately they were so crowded they had 2 hour waits (!!), so we settled on The White House.

Even though they were also very busy, we were able to be seated and started on our basket of yummy breads and creamy butter, ordered more wine & decided on which of the seafood specials we wanted.

We lingered over our meal, going to their back patio area to grab a smoke now and again... This is David in the back... You'll notice it was still bright out when we went in, but by the time we left, night had finally fallen in Kinsale. Did I mention we lingered?

This is a view of Kinsale at night. Actually, it's the street right across from the White House and right in front of our next stop - The Armada.

The Armada was a really nice, large pub. Also very dark, so most of my photos turned out really blurry (or maybe that was the wine?). We were drinking the local brew, Kinsale Irish, and enjoying watching some folks playing Snooker or 9 Ball, or whatever it was. When they finally left, we thought we'd shoot some pool, just for kicks. Or, at least we tried to. It was pretty ugly, I have to say. We muddled through a couple of really bad games, when suddenly this man starts walking briskly through the bar shouting "FINISH! FINISH! FINISH!". And then he turned the lights over the table off. As we were shooting! It was amazing! Never seen a bar clear that fast at closing! Oh, and we should mention, this was about 11:40 pm. Because bars in Ireland close at MIDNIGHT! Alright, seriously, what is that about? And we did try a few other places, but after 11:45, not one bar would even think of serving us.

So that's how Cinderella & the mice felt... We headed back to the guesthouse, stopping to chat with a college kid who was also staying at our guesthouse, and who was headed off to the World Cup a few days later. We all eventually headed inside, wishing the rooms weren't so tiny, or there was somewhere - anywhere - open past midnight.

Ireland Day 2 Cont'd: Blarney Castle

We did reach Blarney Castle eventually & we headed in on the heels of a large student tour group. So instead of going directly into the castle, we walked off into the grounds.

This wee girl wandered into the tower by the castle when Sarah was inside.

But as we got deeper into the grounds, the vegetation reached serious heights.

That's David in one of the gigantic trees.

The "Druid Tree". A famous spot on the grounds.

Finally, we emerged from the grounds and once again approached the castle.

So, beyond David in the next photo is the actual Blarney Stone.

This is where you are supposed to lie down on the roof of the castle, bend over backwards through a hole that is 6 stories high (or so it seems), and kiss the outer wall of the castle.

Right... sorry, but - don't think so.
And we admit, even though our Irish-born friends had warned us that young Irishmen like to breach the grounds and piss on the Blarney Stone, Sarah was still considering kissing the Stone. But after we climbed narrow stairway after narrow stairway, and then we saw folks bending backward through that hole, her resolve crumbled under the weight of her fear of heights.

However, the view from up there was spectacular!

This is looking down to the path that we started off into the grounds on.

And remember the student tourists that caused us to go backwards through the grounds up to the castle? Well, we did manage to avoid them... by the time we got to the top, most of them were milling about just below the castle, waiting to head back to their bus.

Ireland Day 2: Road to Blarney

On the drive from Kenmare across the middle of SW Ireland to Blarney Castle, Sarah was still getting used to driving on the wrong side of the road. Yet every few kilometers she was dying to pull over and take photos. Only once did she actually succumb to the urge, though - and stopped at the top of someones' driveway, which overlooked the River Lee.

It was almost too easy to take beautiful photographs of the scenery.

We did make one other stop along the way, in the town of Macroom, as Sarah was trying to find batteries for her camera.

So, natuarally, we took in a bit of the scenery in town.
Unfortunately, we never found Sarah's batteries, but we did enjoy the stop.
Can you believe this is the town's information center? Beyond this, the castle in Macroom leads back to the public park. How cool would that be?

Ireland Day 1 Cont'd: Kenmare

Eventually we made our way down the Western edge of Co. Kerry to the town of Kenmare. The town itself reminded Sarah very much of Shepherdstown, WV, where she went to college.

We stayed at Virginia's Guesthouse, on the main drag. Though just a moderate guesthouse, we ranked this as the best place we stayed the whole trip. They were so lovely, and the breakfast they served us on our first real morning in Ireland was amazing.

We spent most of the evening in Kenmare wandering about town, checking out a few pubs and their menus. We had our first Irish Guiness at O'Donnabhain's, ate a bit here and there, and finished off our dinner at Davitts.

The next morning we had the incredible breakfast including Sarah's scrambled eggs with fresh salmon and fresh squeezed juice, followed by packing to the comforting sounds of the Dukes of Hazard.

Ireland Day 1: Bunratty Castle

The night of July 4th we flew out of NYC and into Shannon Airport in Ireland - that's where we picked up our itty bitty car - and Sarah drove off with David navigating through an unbelievable number of "roundabouts". Fortunately, our first stop on our brisk tour of SW Ireland wasn't very far away. Bunratty Castle.

Bunratty is a restored and functioning castle and "folk park". We spent a good couple of hours climbing castle steps and through the folk park village - mostly pressing through our jet lag and stretching our muscles after the long flight.

Let's just stop for a moment to say, for what will not be the last time, we had exceptional weather the entire trip to Ireland, save the day of the wedding we had gone to attend. We had more sun-shiny days and blue skies than anyone would expect of the famed "beautiful Irish weather" - we were told to expect wet and chilly - we got sunny and mild.

Bunratty was a lovely way to ease ourselves into Ireland, and, we got to see all manner of animals to boot! (We live in a city, please understand, this was exciting.)

And we took the opportunity to do some of those cheesy touristy things.

We finally headed back out, but not after Sarah took many more photos. We will try to get those up on a separate link.