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Labor Day weekend found me in Ireland. A few weeks before, I was moseying around the Ryan Air website, just out of curiousity, and the next thing I knew, I had a ticket. The return trip cost 1 p. Convert that to American dollars, and that makes it a whopping two cents. I have no idea how these airlines stay in business! They get you on the taxes, but still. I had paid for it almost even before checking to see if I was free that weekend. (Like my grandmother who had laying hens and still bought eggs at the store because they were on sale. Hey, you can't fight genetics!) The ticket to get there was a slightly more expensive 12 pounds 99 pence. So either England really wanted me back, or Ireland really wanted me gone. Fortunately, my calendar was clear, so Ireland, here I come!

First I had to get to Bristol, though. This involved walking to the Cheltenham train station, taking a train to Bristol Temple Meads, then getting on a bus to the airport. Then I took a plane to Dublin, rented a car from a Hertz representative with the exact same birthday as me (year and everything) and driving to Cashel. Why Cashel? Why not? Maybe because I'd had a good cheese called Cashel Blue. (If you like cheese, just you wait till I stop procrastinating and write about Britain's Biggest Cheese Festival that I went to! Don't you love these little teasers?)

I had been slightly excited to be on the right side of the road, but it turns out that was faulty intelligence. Left side of the road again. However, after Scotland, I was an old pro. The only problem was 15 minutes down the road, where the crazy people driving close behind me flashed their lights like they wanted to pass, then waved maniacally at me. Turns out my tire was flat. Yikes! I just got this baby! I did manage to find a gas station with free air, filled up the tire, and went on my way... and it stayed inflated for the rest of the weekend. So crisis averted.

As I drove through tiny towns, I witnessed a beautiful sunset and even found some great music on the radio. I thought it might be traditional Irish music, but it turns out it was the live feed from an international folk festival taking place in Cork. The group I was listening to (they played for over an hour) turned out to be called Nordic, and they're from Sweden! They were playing traditional Swedish folk music, which I've never heard, so I'll just trust them. (I only know about traditional Swedish folk knitting.) It was beautiful music, but of course, now I can't find any reference to them on the internet, other than on the folk festival site. Just as the festival switched to a Russian a cappella group, I arrived fairly late in Cashel, but I had warned the owner of the B&B where I was staying, so after some persistent knocking, they let me in.

The next morning, after a lovely breakfast, I walked about five minutes up the hill. The B&B I had chosen was in the shadow of the Rock of Cashel, which Rick Steves made sound interesting enough for me to go there. In fact, instead of his usual short summary, he gives an entire walking tour of the place.

Cashel Rock is the seat of the kings of Munster, who were around from 300 to 1100 AD. All the other "old" places I've written about, like Tintern Abbey in the previous entry, were just getting started at that point. Wow. Cashel is also associated with St. Patrick, as in, THE St. Patrick. He baptized King Aengus there and accidentally stabbed dear Aengus in the foot with his giant cross in the process. Aengus didn't say anything; he thought the process of becoming a Christian was supposed to be inherently painful.

The site developed over the years, so it's a little bit of a mish-mash. For example, Cormac's Chapel is a small building built by King Cormac MacCarthy in 1134. There are remnants of frescoes over the altar bit that are 850 years old. The wet climate damaged them, but not as much as the Protestants who painted over them. The blue colors were created using ground-up lapis lazuli gemstones. Also present on the Rock at this time was a tall, round tower, built in 1101 as a lookout. The thing is still standing, which is pretty impressive. Which brings me to the "new" (13th century) Cathedral, which because it had to be facing East/West, and because there was only so much room on top of the hill, was wedged in between Cormac's Chapel and the Tower. Additionally, they had to give the Cathedral a really long Choir and a really short Nave, instead of the traditional opposite. In any case, the new building left a really strangely shaped enclosed space in between the Chapel and the Cathedral. When I wandered into it, a pigeon suddenly took off from a cranny in the wall and made me shriek.

However, by far my favorite part was the gravestones. They were all topped with beautiful Celtic crosses with intricate carvings. Several graves even had shamrocks carved into them. I later found out that the Celtic cross, which evokes ancient times in my mind, top even modern-day Irish graves. Furthermore, the view from the top of the Rock of endless green pastures of the Plains of Tipperary was just lovely, despite the so-so weather.

Besides the structures that have been crumbling with time, certain elements have helped. For example, the imposing O'Scully family grave marker, once 20 feet tall, was struck by lighting in 1976. The pieces lay nearby. On the other side of the Cathedral, a wall that was weakened by cannon shelling in 1647 was then bombarded by wind on "The Night of the Big Wind" in 1848, causing a Volkswagon-sized chunk of wall to fall off and hit the ground, where it still rests.

Within the Cathedral itself, two parts caught my attention. The first was a grated window that overlooked the Choir and Altar area, which was for lepers to observe the service without having to be gawked at by the rest of the congregation. The other was the grave of the 100-year old archbishop Miller Magrath, who was a Catholic bishop, then become a Protestant bishop while still getting paid for the Catholic bishop gig, married a couple times, had kids, then converted back to Catholicism on his deathbed. He stole the fancy covering on his tomb from another bishop's grave.

With one last look at the gorgeous view, I got back in the car and headed out of town, destination west coast, which I will recount in the next entry.

So there you have it. Cashel in a nutshell. (Ooh! I only just realized you could try some clever pun with Cashel and cashew... but I won't.)

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