Kilkenny to Kinsale (Kilkenny Castle, Rock of Cashel, Cobh)
Our breakfast buffet at the Rivercourt Hotel was a little sketchy — no one would seat us for a while and it was a while before other customers showed up. Also, who puts out a whole salver of fried eggs which then got lukewarm and hard? But everything was reasonably tasty, plus we were able to make little sandwiches for later in the day.
We met Michael promptly at 9am and loaded our bags in the van. He drove us the (very) short way to Kilkenny Castle (it was just a few hundred yards across the river) and we agreed to text and meet once we were finished.
We were the first visitors in the Castle; there was no guided tour so we started walking through the rooms, reading the limited information available in each.
In the third room there was a truly giant set of elk horns on the wall and a docent nearby of whom Barb could ask questions. The horns turned out to be from the long-extinct Irish Elk, preserved in bogs for thousands of years.
Barb chatted with him for at least 20 minutes on all manner of history of the Castle and the Butler family that owned it as the Dukes of Ormond for many centuries. The castle became a Norman and English stronghold in Ireland. It turned out all you needed to do was ask a question and the docents came to helpful life. We covered topics including the Butler’s relationships with various British kings, Oliver Cromwell’s ugly record in Ireland, recovering the furniture auctioned off from the castle, and much more. We had similar luck with several other docents, though Barb noticed that the younger ones tended to just point us toward QR codes to read more.
We walked about half of the Medieval Mile (High Street) in Kilkenny but didn’t find much we needed to shop for. We made our way to St. Mary’s Cathedral and had a quick look before summoning Micheal.
As we drove about an hour to the Rock of Cashel, I shared my overnight observation that given the Irish peoples’ long and frequently sad and oppressed history, the last 25 years or so may have been the brightest so far for the nation and a cause for optimism. I hadn’t realized just how young Ireland was as an independent nation — just one lifetime since 1948 — after finally throwing off the yoke of centuries of English domination and effective third world status. Even within that span, things were pretty bleak through the 50s, 60s 70s and 80s. It’s only since the Good Friday accords and the Celtic Tiger boom that things really started looking up. Certainly there were setbacks with the 2008 financial crisis and Covid, but overall the nation is on a positive track and has an enviable supply of appealing culture, music, literature, humor, cuisine, people (most of all), and an Irish diaspora many times the size of the Irish population. There’s good reason for optimism that they are on a positive track and things should improve in coming decades, maybe eventually resulting in peaceful unification of the entire island. Mike seemed to agree though he maybe didn’t see this as quite so profound a revelation as I thought it was.
The Rock of Cashel is one of the spiritual hearts of Ireland, a site where St. Patrick is said to have converted one of the early Irish kings (I think). It is now a mostly ruined set of monastery buildings started in 1100 and left in ruins in the 17th century when the bishop decided the site was too cold and nasty to maintain. It was cold and nasty on the day we visited as well, so it was easy to believe why it was abandoned. Nevertheless, it’s an impressive pile of rocks just not quite as majestic as I’d anticipated. We waited a short while for a guided tour but the guide was, for once, not terribly illuminating. We dutifully followed, snapped a few pics, then got out of the cold as soon as we could. We did not glean all we could have of the majesty of the Rock of Cashel…we were uncomfortable and slightly grumpy tourists at that point, not at our finest. But I took a bunch of photos.
Our original itinerary had us going to Blarney Castle but we decided the day before that we could skip that in favor of seeing Cobh (formerly Queenstown) and its Heritage Museum highlighting Cobh’s considerable role in Ireland’s emigration story. We stopped first at Cobh Cathedral, an impressive structure overlooking the harbor and dominating the skyline.
Next we went to the Heritage Museum adjacent to Cobh’s passenger ship dock. Barb and I spent more than two hours reading through the well-laid-out displays covering 500 years of Irish emigration, starting in the 1620s. There were interesting factoids about early shipments of people (some willing, some not) to the Americas, Ireland’s role in the American Revolution and subsequent focus on populating Canada and Australia, the spike in emigration due to the famine, the continued increases in emigration through the 19th and 20th centuries, Cobh’s connections to the Titanic and Lusitania disasters, and the decline and subsequent tourist-driven rebirth of passenger traffic in the last 50 years. The museum was an enjoyable and informative alternative to Blarney Castle and we were very glad Michael suggested it. We didn’t get many good pictures there, unfortunately. There was a statue outside dedicated to Annie Moore, the first immigrant to pass through Ellis Island.
Michael took us to one more stop for a postcard-worthy shot of the cathedral and the brightly colored houses of Cobh. We had to surreptitiously snap the photo over the wall of someone’s garden – they had built the six-foot wall to prevent tourists from stopping there all the time.
Then it was on to Kinsale which Mike compared to Newport, RI, but we felt more resembled Annapolis. Mike gave us a quick tour of the town where he used to live and recommended several spots for dinner. He checked us into our unexpectedly luxurious Perryville House hotel and we were immediately sad we weren’t spending more than one night in this elegant spot.
Barb and I did some window shopping while it was still light then opted for Dino’s Kinsale which Mike said offered excellent fish and chips. He was correct, and my grilled lemon sole was top notch as well. We left very happy. I was tempted to pop into one of several pubs that seemed to be playing traditional Irish music that Monday evening but we ended up back in the nice hotel room where we got ready for bed and I typed these notes, accompanied by more British game shows on TV.
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