From Cork to Kilkenny

It was time to leave Cork, so we headed north toward Kilkenny. We stopped at a ruined ancient castle called the Rock of Cashel. Supposedly, St. Patrick, when he wasn't busy driving the snakes out of Ireland, also drove Satan out as well. The epic battle caused a large rock to land at this spot, though it's not there to test for Satan's DNA or anything.

Pretty cool looking castle though, though lacking in any kind of informational signs, and we weren't of a mind to take guided tour. So we headed out. Ended up on back roads and detours again, which was frustrating and made the trip take a little too long for comfort. Sigh. It's been an unfortunate theme. Tomorrow is all motorway, so that should be the end of it though.

Kilkenny, as we learned just before we headed this way, is having an arts festival for the next two weeks. We were a little trepeditious about crowds, but we (accidentally, I'll admit) cruised right up to our hotel, which is located just at the junction of all the main streets. Fortunately, our room faced none of them and was pretty quiet. The town is known for having a pretty and well preserved castle, which it certainly does.

The town was absolutely hopping and we walked around, fearing that it would be tacky like Killarney, but in fact it was pretty and tasteful for the most part. The mall kind of area was easy to avoid. We had lunch at a very nice little cafe which was unfortunately under siege by bees, which caused us to exit quickly.

The festival seems very popular and features all kinds of arts, from music to theater to painting to crafts. A lot of it was pretty mainstream (yes, we know that Ireland has pretty landscapes) but some of it was pretty interesting.

I'm guessing most of the people in town were Irish, but there were definitely a lot of British and Europeans as well. Overall, it was a nice vibe and the shopping was good. Ronnie found some very pretty earrings that she bought in a pop up store shared by a few local artists. It was kind of fun because the woman who made them had good advice as to which would look best on her. Suddenly she realized she'd left her purse somewhere and realized it was probably from our bee-induced (not a phrase I've used before) hasty exit from the cafe. Fortunately, it was safely put away and ready for me to pick up.

We had dinner in a tapas place near the hotel. Again, very busy and upbeat vibe throughout. The food was good, though there was really too much in each of the small plates to make it workable as tapas. If a restaurant suggests ordering 3 tapas as a serving and we both struggled to finish 2, you know the portion sizing is off.

As we hung out in the room after dinner, we periodically heard music and applause from the events outside. A bunch of guitarists and other players were jamming in the hotel bar. I listened a little bit. Nothing special, but still nice.

Gotta say, having nice weather makes a huge difference. After all of the cold and grey, having some sunshine lifted our mood significantly. As one of our taxi drivers said a couple of days later, Ireland is a nice place when it's sunny, but when it rains in can be pretty miserable.