from peace to taco-beds

This morning began on such a peaceful note…

We were out in the town before all the stores opened and just wandered around watching the city wake up. It was such a nice experience!

Kilkenny is a totally different world from Dublin. The streets are ALL cobblestoned and there are Abbeys, Cathedrals or Castles everywhere you turn… we attempted to take a bus out to Dunmore caves, but that never happened. Instead, our morning took us into an area filled with local crafts and artisans’ shops. We wandered around there for a while and found Butler House & Gardens behind it, so we wandered around the gardens for a while. It was not a nice as the disappearing hostel manager told us, so I was incredibly underdressed for the morning, but our goal was to avoid the sketchy hostel as much as possible, so we suffered the low temperatures & wind.

We eventually made our way across the street to Kilkenny Castle. Took lots of pics of the outside and the HUMONGOUS lawn-turned-park and decided to fork out the couple euros for a tour. What a great decision! The tour guide was phenomenal – we learned all about the history of the castle, it’s owners, how the styles of the time affected the changes of its design… Ky & I were both very impressed. We also found out that Butler House & Gardens, as well as the crafts & artisans’ shops had once been parts of the original castle property (the shops = the stables). We also learned that mid-20th century, the last Duke of Ormonde sold the ruins of the castle to Ireland for 50 british pounds – pretty nice, eh?

Lunchtime was spent in this fancy 2-wineglass-setting Chinese restaurant with me and my crazy hair wearing plaid boys’ shorts and an “I HEART MOM” t-shirt. Talk about embarrassing! The one server couldn’t stop laughing to himself! UGH. Oh well! I’m sure Ky can tell the story much better that I can! ☺

Our afternoon was spent sitting in the Castle park people watching and taking pictures… a pretty-near-perfect day!

The day finished after a really nice conversation with 2 new germans in our hostel by sleeping in a taco-bed. It kinda reminded me of the days in NB camp when the original 1948 mattresses were still in style… ahh… the memories… and the backaches! Haha.