Well, Kilkenney is done. Our stay at the Club House Hotel was grand, and the lovely Ian took care of everything, from getting us dinner to taking our bags up both flights of stairs, to making sure we had internet and breakfast in the morning. On top of all that, he was good looking, too. I may have to move here.
We went off to Kilkenney castle first thing, since it was only about 2 blocks from the hotel. One of the things that I like about Ireland so far is that almost all of the “heritage sites”, like castles and such, are located fairly closely to the town, and you can walk to almost all of them. It’s really rather nice to have them all so conveniently nearby, since we’ve been spending entirely too much time in the car as it is.
In any event, we walked up the way to Kilkenney Castle, and I wasn’t able to get any good pictures since the entire roadway in front is under construction, and so there are fences and pylons and orange signs all about – not very photogenic. I did take a few pictures of the interior courtyard (even a few that indulged my love of the pigeons)…
…and even a few of the interior of the castle before a guide told me that photography was not allowed. Oops!
The castle was interesting, but not overwhelming, and it’s been self-guided ever since March. The guides are still there, but now they simply are available for questions rather than leading tours. We did end up chatting with one of the ladies in the portrait gallery, which has a fantastic wood ceiling that is built like the hull of a Viking longboat and painted with intricate detailing on the wood. Again, the OPW tour guides make all the difference. The ceiling is nice when you simply look at it as a period piece, but once you learn that the wife of the late baron commissioned it, and the details of her life, it brings it so much more vividly into focus. According to the guide, the baron and his wife were one of the few love matches of the day, in a time of marriages for political or financial gain, and she was grief-stricken when he died. She took to walking in the local forests to deal with her sadness in losing him, and all of the bits of foliage painted on the ceiling are plants that she brought back from her walks, and insisted that they be included in the mural.
We were done with the castle in shortorder, and since the weather was a bit drizzly and grey, we decided to go across the way to the Kilkenney Crafts Council, a little plaza directly across the street from the castle that showcases Irish artists. There was quite a few marvelous things there, and I discovered a new artist, Anna Nielsen, that I am definitely going to be following up on once I get home. I can’t afford any of her stuff here, but perhaps once the exchange rate gets better I might be able to pick up a piece or two. I did buy one little coaster that was marked €1.75, and I handed the woman a $20 in USD, since you could pay with cash and I was running very low on euros...she hands me back €12! I was like "what the f..." - the exchange rate was so bad that my €1.75 coaster cost almost $6! I was half tempted to ask if it came with an egg and some mayonnaise. I spend, you learn. Pay in euros, always, unless the exchange rate is phenomenal, and always ask beforehand what the exchange rate *is*.
Post crafts bonanza we ended up walking around Kilkenney a bit, which is a charming little town, and in some ways reminds me a bit of Venice and some of the older cities of Europe, with all of its little passageways through between streets.
I love these - it always feels like a passageway to another world to me...like you'll walk through the arch and there will be a whole separate universe waiting on the other side. Maybe it's from watching too many episodes of Mr. Rogers when I was a kid, with his train to the Land of Make Believe, but I can never walk by one of these without holding my breath a little in anticipation.
Another one of the things that I like that seems to be particular to Irish small towns is the double colored door. It may be a holdover from when the buildings were used for some other purpose, but I like the two doors close together, each painted a different color.
(I also like the attitude of the Kilkennians, which is posted prominently in several places.)
After our short stroll through town, where we decimated the “Everything for €2” store (like our dollar stores at home) and stocked up on candy bars and crisps, we headed up the street to St. Canice’s Cathedral, again within comfortable walking distance. I don't think I've been in any town in Ireland yet that you can't do almost everything on foot. St. Canice's wasn't much different than most of the other churches we've seen - the church itself was pretty, and though we didn’t go inside since there was an active service, the graveyard was a bit different than those we’d seen before.
The church itself was in very good shape…
…and there were several very pretty crosses in the yard, including one near the caretaker’s cottage that was overhung by a beautiful tree, some sort of hanging wisteria or weeping willow.
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I myself like the oldest crosses, that tend to be really simple and small. Few of them are inscribed, or they are so old that the inscriptions have been worn away by time, but there is something about them that speaks to me – vestiges of a life lived so long ago that names no longer matter, but whose existence is still marked and remembered.
We walked around a bit, paying our respects to the dead, and saw about five million celtic crosses, and a ton of tombstones whose writing was illegible. We found a bit of humor in one gravesite, where a man buried both his wives next to each other. I hope that they liked each other in life! We didn’t find his gravesite, but got a good chuckle out of both of his ladies being side by side.
There was also an angel in the St. Canice’s yard, and until I saw it there I hadn’t realized how few angels there are in the graveyards here. This one was the first I’ve seen, and there was no name on it, nor date of birth or death – only a small poem about Death taking the flowers away. I assume the marker is for a child, though it stands by itself in a corner of the green.
After St. Canice’s, we headed back downtown (all five blocks of it) to collect the car and head out to the Rock of Cashel. We had debated skipping it, as we are spending more time in the car than anticipated, but we decided that since it was on the way, we would make the time to see it.
Long, arduous travel story later, we arrived at the Rock in the pouring rain, 5 minutes before they closed for the day. (We should have known something was up when we were the only ones in the parking lot, besides a local cat cleaning himself.) To say our tour was hurried might be the understatement of the century, but the Rock is not actually just a rock, but a castle and a series of buildings built ON the Rock of Cashel, none of which have roofs. So perhaps only having a few minutes to explore wasn't such a bad thing. I know it was driving me crazy trying to keep the water off my lens!
After we blitzkrieged the Rock, we headed down the N8 (instead of the goat trails), and found that just because Ireland deems it a "highway" doesn't mean it's any wider than your car or paved particularly well.
We've been down this road before, and I think that's where the rear axle went. I'm very glad that the car had a lot of body damage when we picked it up, 'cause otherwise I'd be paying quite a bit out of pocket. I've been driving in ditches and through hedges and over mountains... and even the GPS has shown me off the road more than a few times. Oops.
So, thanks to our reprise country tour, we were a bit later arriving in Kinsale than we wanted to be, but we were still there before dark. Thank God, since we ended up having to stop and ask a lovely couple for directions. On an aside, I love love love the people in Ireland, since everyone waves when you drive by, and our two minute request for directions ended up a ten minute conversation with the couple walking by - they directed us to Jimmy's B&B, the San Antonio, that was right across from the Old Presbytery. We'd missed it coming in from Kilkenney, as the road was closed from the other direction and there was only a bit of Friar Street actually open, of course from the opposite side that we were coming. (Better than when we left, though, as they'd closed the road completely and we had to maneuver past a giant hole in the road and several pylons...have I mentioned how glad I am that there is damage marked on the rental car form already?)
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Jimmy's place was nice - his parents ran the B&B for many years, and he took it over when they passed on, though he's a musician by trade. He's a bit of a bohemian figure, and fully embraces the Irish habit of interjecting to show that he's listening - participatory listening, even here in Ireland - holla! We were a bit disappointed to not hear him sing - he only plays at the pub every other week, and we'd arrived in an off week. BUT - he actually gave me one of his CDs, and he's quite decent if you like traditional Irish music. We listened to it on the roads out of Kinsale, and had a grand time singing along to "Lizzie Lindsey" and the other tunes on the CD.
Once we settled in, Jimmy gave us a bit of a "pub talk" - a rundown on what was going on in which pub, and what to expect and where to go. He recommended both the Ceac, (pronounced "Chock") and the Shack for a pint. He also let us know that the tourists drink from about 7 until they are schnookered by about 10, and the Irish start drinking about 9:30-10, and are home by midnight. So, naturally, we went out about 8:20, and ended up at the Ceac, as they had live music. It ended up being the proprietor's night to play, and he was quite good - but his piano player was amazing. He was playing "St. Theresa" by Joan Osborne when we came in, then went into "Revolution" by Tracy Chapman, and followed that with an absolutely stellar rendition of "Fragile", which I believe was written by Jimi Hendrix, but redone by Sting a few years ago. Talk about a diverse selection! The proprietor (whose name I don't remember, sorry!) and the Italian (whose name I never knew, but I'd have liked to have it, along with his phone number - mrow!) switched off singing, and they both were excellent. They actually opened up the floor for a bit, and one of the locals gave an amazing rendition of "Valerie", by Amy Winehouse. Jimmy and his girlfriend Noreen had joined us at the pub, and he asked me if I wanted to go up, but hellllllll no. I can't carry a tune in a bucket, and if I'm going to get thrown out of a pub in the Emerald Isle, it's not goin' to be for singin'.
The pub sing was a rollicking good time - the Italian was a friend of the proprietors who was in town for a visit, and they basically had decided to have a jam session that was supposed to go from 7 until 9, and ended up going from about 5 after 7 until almost 11 o'clock. The whole pub was dancing, everybody was singing backup on the chorus (yes, even me, though badly) and they just kept on keeping on. There was a funky version of "Peaceful Easy Feeling" that segued into a few Elvis tunes, then a Fats Domino tune that morphed into "Kiss" by Prince, and back to Muddy Waters. The Italian had the spotlight for a while, and from the way he rocking out the blues, he had to have spent time down in Louisiana or the South. He was amazing, and though I had only intended to go for a short drink, I ended up staying even after Mom and Linda had gone to get dinner. My pint of Bulmer's was too soon gone, and the music was still rolling, so I added a Bulmer's longneck to the toll...(the pints are the big bottles, and the longnecks an American sized beer).
I was pretty disappointed when the music finally wound down, but I think I would have stayed all night, and I'd already been drinking for quite a while without having eaten for most of the day. I joined Mom and Linda for dinner at Jim Edward's pub, a really nice place about a block from the Ceac, but as usually happens when I drink, I ended up chatting the whole night away, and only eating a little tiny bit. Oh well, I may have gone to bed a little too tipsy to realize I was hungry, but the night was more than worth a few hunger pangs.
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