Sadza

Lovely buffet breakfast at the hotel. This is the last day of the trip; heading home tomorrow. Last night, before retiring, we booked one-day passes for Dublin’s hop-on, hop-off bus. Our plan, which we have employed in other cities, is to ride the entire circuit once, then do it again, stopping at interesting locations we have picked out, subject to time constraints. With just over a million people, Dublin is by far Ireland’s largest city. Happily, however, the core of the Irish capital is actually fairly compact. The weather as we start out is not too bad; no rain but an unsettled sky. Our brilliant plan for using the bus is immediately knocked into a cocked hat thanks to the visit to Dublin today of British prime minister Boris Johnson. Whole areas of the city are ... read more

We get to sleep in a bit this morning. As we pass through the lobby on the way to breakfast, the backwards musical sculpture bothers me again. I decide to explain the problem to the clerk at the desk. She smiles politely but clearly doesn't really get it. The hotel's buffer breakfast is particularly good. There is fresh honey comb and (gasp) fresh peanut butter. What a treat. And we're off again on a day trip to explore the area south of Kilkenny. The landscape is much less interesting than the wild coastal regions we toured recently, consisting mostly of rolling hills and farms. We drive through Bennettsbridge, the location of several flour mills, and Thomastown, known for the 13th-century Jerpoint Abbey and the Church of St. Nicholas. Yes, that St. Nick. He's buried here. Tony ... read more

The weather looks promising this morning. Today we are headed for another beautiful Atlantic peninsula, the next one south of Dingle: the Iveraugh Peninsula and its famous RIng of Kerry drive. As usual, Tony entertains us on the drive with an endless stream of information and stories. He spends some time talking about Ireland's trees. Native species include ash, beech, oak, hawthorn and yew. Pretty much all conifers were imported to the island. With native trees under threat, there have been efforts to reestablish native species. But one experiment failed miserably, as ash trees imported from Norway turned out to have a fungus that almost completely wiped out the remaining ash. Tony tells us about the tradition of poitin (usually rendered as potcheen in English). This is Irish moonshine, made in small batches, traditionally from malted ... read more

Buffet breakfast at the hotel. In the category of combinations you never thought of, I have a caramel fudge-flavoured yoghurt. It's yet another drizzly day, unfortunately. We reach Limerick, Tony’s home town. Our first stop is alongside the Shannon River to see the Treaty Stone, where reputedly the treaty that ended the war between the Irish and William of Orange was signed in 1691. Under the terms, a promise was made to respect Catholicism, but the treaty was rejected by both the English and Irish Parliaments and its terms were ignored. Thus Limerick became known as The City of the Broken Treaty. We cross the river and stop on the other side of the Shannon, directly across from the Treaty Stone. We descend and have the opportunity for a quick visit to St. John’s Castle (1210) ... read more

Breakfast at the hotel, à la carte in this establishment, then off to explore the Connemara peninsula. The terrain soon becomes quite rugged and mountainous. We are once again in bog territory on the Irish moors. The weather is unsettled; windy with brief downpours. One mountain in particular dominates the landscape. This is Croagh Patrick, where in July every year, thousands of Irish Catholics make a pilgrimage to the top on foot as a penitence. Tony gives us a history lesson on the Great Famine of 1845–52. The English version of this tragic episode is that a potato blight affected the Irish potato crop and caused widespread famine. This is in fact what I learned in school. Tony says that the potato blight was a factor but the real cause of the famine was excessive taxation ... read more