Kilkenny and Cashel

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Happy Fourth of July! On Good Morning Ireland this morning (Ireland’s equivalent to Good Morning America, we think) they had the owner of a Dublin Restaurant called Captain America cook some “traditional” American food. He made hamburgers (okay) topped with grilled pineapple and thousand island dressing (???) I guess it’s a matter of interpretation.
We both slept well last night. Mark was beat and we had “a bit of a lie in” as they would say over here. We got up about 8:00. Mark looked out the window and said, “It’s raining!” Well okay then! We fixed our continental breakfast and got ready to get to it. When we opened the door to our room, Yvonne had taped a note to our door: “Mark and Beth, please don’t forget to come get the parking pass before you leave. Yvonne.” Seems the guest house has a year pass to the parking garage where we had stowed the car so for the price, we get room, breakfast, loads of local information AND parking. With a smile. Not a bad deal!
We walked out the front door of the Butler Court, walked in the front and out the back of the Butler House, through the garden and design center and over to the castle. We got tickets for the Kilkenny Castle (covered by the Irish Heritage Card) and only had a few minutes to wait for our tour.
The land the castle sits on is on a river so was an important strategic site, first controlled by a series of Irish chief. In 1172, when the Normans invaded, Strongbow (da man of the Norman Invasion) built a wooden tower on the land. About a twenty years later a stone dwelling replaced the wooden structure and three of the four towers still remain. Just before 1400, and several wars, fights and bankruptcies later, the castle was purchased by the Butler family and they occupied it for many years. The castle was completely redecorated during Victorian times and this is what is reflected now. The guide was very informative and made the Butler family (whom we, of course, had never heard of) really come to life. One of the Butler family claims to fame was an impressive art collection. At one point, they had a 6 foot wide hallway converted into a 30 foot wide long hall so that they could display their 350 paintings. Eventually the Butlers fell on hard times and had to leave the castle. They auctioned off everything in the estate for £6000 and moved to London. In the 1960s, the then Butler in control of the property sold it to the Irish state for £50. Sigh. How the mighty have fallen…
After Kilkenny Castle, we walked through the design center and did some shopping, went into town to the chemists for some cough syrup (nasty!) and a poke in the shops. One shop keeper asked us where we were off to and when we said we really didn’t know, he encouraged us to visit the Rock of Cashel. We had planned to visit that the next day but he said, “It’s an easy drive and only just over an hour. Try it today!” So we said, “Why not?” A quick stop back at the Butler Court to drop off the cough syrup and postcards and pick up the parking pass and we were off. The drive wasn’t bad (though it was raining for part of it) and we found the center of Cashel with no problem. The parking lot was a pay lot (60 cents an hour) and I only had 2 Euros in change so I put it in the machine and got a ticket giving us a little over 2 hours of parking. We walked out of the lot and into the tourist information, having no idea where we were going or what we were doing. Though we could see the monastery on top of the hill, how to get there was a mystery as there were no signs. I told the lady at the TI that we had no idea what we were doing and she said, “Oh, no problem. You’re a five minutes walk.” She gave us a map, directions and a warm smile. I am beginning to suspect that the Irish don’t mark their roads well so that they can be nice to strangers when they’re lost.
We walked around the corner, down a mostly residential street PACKED with cars and up a short hill and we were at the base of the Rock of Cashel. The Rock is really a large hill of limestone in the center of the town of Cashel. It is the site where St. Patrick baptized King Aegus, one of the big guys in Ireland in 432. Apparently, in 432 there were two very powerful kings in Ireland and Aegus was one of them. We got our tickets (Irish Heritage Card again!!) and went on a tour, this time led by a young girl (probably on break from university for the summer) who, again, really knew her stuff about the site. She showed us the cross that was erected on the site where St. Patrick did the deed and started the Christianizing of Ireland. The Rock was constantly under attack from one chiefdom or another and finally the chief who owned it said, “Hey Church! It’s all yours!” Then the Church would have to pay to defend it, not the chief. S-m-a-r-t! It stayed in the Catholic churches control until Oliver Cromwell came in the mid 1600s. He attacked, vectored and then used the site as a courthouse. Eventually the church was once again given control. We walked through the extensive graveyard which is covered with Celtic crosses. The guide told us that there are still a few folks left on a list of people who had earned the right to be buried on the rock. By this time we were outside and the rain was coming in at a force, it was cold and blowing. The guide said, “Eventually the archbishop found this site too cold, difficult to get to and expensive to maintain so he abandoned it.” Mark and I looked at each other though what now looked like sleet. Ya think? It was an impressive site and well worth the trip.
We stopped for a cup of coffee/tea in the town (still had time left on our parking pass!) and then set off back to Kilkenny. Now, Kilkenny is a pretty major town and a very major tourist site. But there are NO SIGNS ON THE ROADS! It should have taken us just over an hour to get from Cashel back to Kilkenny but we literally missed 4 turns and ended up going really south then east then back up north to Kilkenny. Luckily I have a really good map book or we would still be wandering around the country side. Mark was driving and we’d get to a town. I’d say, “The road we were looking for was about 2 kilometers back. Let’s look for this road.” We’d find that road but then miss the next. It was wild.
We got back to Kilkenny (whew!) at about 5:00 and decided to rest/read for a while. We went to a pub on the high street for dinner with the idea that we would take a walk after dinner and then go listen to some music. Talked to a couple from Maine while we were waiting for a table. We wished each other a happy fourth of July. Dinner was fairly forgettable. After dinner, we walked out onto the High Street and were hit with a driving, cold rain. It wasn’t terribly heavy, though, so I decided to try our walk anyway. Mark looked at me like I was nuts but followed along. We walked about a block and a half and I turned to Mark and said, “Dr. Brady said I should take it easy. Let’s go back to the pub!” Good idea! And so we did, doctor’s suggestion and all.
We went back to Kytler’s where there was supposed to be music at 9:30. We had noted that the white lines in the center of the road are really a suggestion that passing wasn’t a good idea, sort of like Don’t Walk signs in Manhattan. We found out tonight that music at 9:30 is sort of a why-don’t-you-gather-at-about-9:30-because-there-might-be-music kind of thing. They did start warming up at about 9:35. However, getting there at 9:00 for us meant we got the last seats in the bar so that was okay. And it wasn’t raining inside—bonus! They finally started playing at about 10:00 by which time the bar was packed and we were tired. We thought about auctioning off our seats but resisted the urge. We left at about 10:30 and took the short walk back to the Butler Court Guest Accommodations. We have really enjoyed our time in Kilkenny. Tomorrow, it’s off to County Cork for a day on the seaside at Kinsale and then off to Kerry, the Killarney National Forest and the peninsulas of Ireland.

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