Ireland trip report, Friday

Friday, 10 March 2006

We woke up on Friday morning, ate breakfast and checked out of our hotel. (Oh, and the toilet broke in the middle of the night, which was annoying.) The front desk person said that the train station, our next stop, was too far to walk with luggage. Our initial plan was to get back on the tourist bus and ride it around town to the train station, but the bus was taking a really long time to show up, and the line of tourists for the bus was getting longer and longer. I was worried that we would continue waiting, and then the bus wouldn't let us on with our luggage, or we would miss our train. So we decided to take another cab. This cabbie wasn't quite so chatty. I think he was Romanian or something.

Immigration in Ireland
Which brings me to my next interesting observation about Ireland. Apparently, when several eastern European/former Soviet nations joined the EU a couple years ago, Ireland was one of just a couple of countries that allowed residents of these countries to come work without a visa. The result has been a huge influx of immigrants from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, etc. They are ever-present in the service industry especially, working in hotels, restaurats, etc. Sometimes we had a harder time communicating and asking questions than we do in Belgium or France!! Not sure if this is going to be good or bad for Ireland; we very frequently heard native Dubliners lamenting about how different the town is from just a few years ago. Most people weren't overtly prejudicial but it seemed to be only thinly veiled. Just some interesting dynamics that don't really show up in the tour books.....

Kilkenny
Anyway, we went to the train station and bought tickets to Kilkenny, a small, medieval town a couple hours south of Dublin. The tickets were about 25 euros for a round trip. The train wasn't particularly comfortable, but it could have been worse. Mike finally got to see a couple of sheep from the train, which was nice :) It was lamb season, I couldn't get enough of the bouncy, pouncy little baby sheep, they crack me up! We walked from the train station to the center of the little town, found a pub with a B&B upstairs (The Rafter Dempsey's - have no clue what the heck that name is supposed to mean) and had a fish and chips lunch. The room wasn't cheap (40 euros per pers0n) but it was very clean, fairly quiet, with a decent private bathroom. We unloaded our stuff. Then, off to the castle.

Kilkenny Castle is a nice Medieval castle dating from about the 13th century. Fairly extensively remodeled in the 1800's and again during the 20th century. Excavations still go on now, uncovering stuff from the original wooden castle from the 12th century and maybe even earlier.

It was a castle. Eh. Nice way to spend an hour or so; plus, apparently Fridays in March the castle's free! Which made it a lot nicer. There are only tours once every hour, so we had some waiting time to wander around the grounds, and check out the Kilkenny Design Center across the streets in the old castle stables. They have high quality Irish crafts and gifts (books, pottery, jewelry, music, sweaters, soap, all kinds of stuff). Fun for me, not so fun for Mike.

Then we walked across town to see the other "big" sight in Kilkenny, which is St. Canice's Cathedral. somehow, in this tiny little town, we got lost, but it didn't really matter because when we got to the cathedral it was closed and had been closed for a while (darned off season hours). But I got some nice pictures of the cemetary and the exterior of the church and the "round tower."

Not sure what the big deal is with the "round towers," they're really old and all over Ireland. I don't know if they just stand up to the test of time longer than other buildings because they're not sued as much, or maybe it's the structure, not sure. This one is from about 1100.

I really liked spending time walking around the town itself. The old town center is very very well kept up, buildings painted really cutely....all sorts of really quaint pubs. We stopped in a couple of them on the way back from the cathedral. The Anna Conda (cute name eh?) was really neat looking, but it was totally dead (then again, it WAS only like 5:30.) the bartender, however, was very friendly and suggested I try some black currant in my Strongbow cider. Not bad at all. Then we went to another place, Kyteler's Inn. Very old building, used to belong to a witch they say.....fantastic atmosphere but *zero* craic. We had a couple of drinks, then took off.

We had a nice dinner in a fairly expensive kinda-French restaurant, I think it was called del Sol...we had the menu which included a bottle of wine and it wasn't too bad. Service a bit slow, and it was odd that nobody spoke excellent english in this little restaurant in a little Irish town.(the two people we encountered who worked there were a French man and a Polish girl) It was a sweet quaint little place.

After dinner, we headed back to the pub where we were staying. It was karaoke night, and there was a big bachelorette party from Dublin (They call them "Hen Nights" over here). Apparently they're not allowed in Dublin so everyone always takes the train out to some other town for them. It's big business. Carrie sang "Crazy" by Patsy Cline, and we turned in.